Talk:2021-04-11 Ashes Pathfinders Podcast with Steven Sharif

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mm-hmm yeah follow up on this by the way wizzy she's a mod here wizzy mcnasty i just want to say this i saw your question it's not being asked so stephen this is no there's no reason that i actually answer this but she was like i wanted to know if we're safe with phoenix that's my name right with m as a master leader or will gm looting revenge be too strong i remember that that was right i can't i i was filming and you totally ninja looted the spider boss [Laughter] i might honestly i don't think i would if i were to do the funny little like just you know check in on some erg as he's playing and steal something from him it would be like only during like you know the crescendo of his gaming experience like where he's downing a boss and like he's been spending a lot of time to get there then maybe i just might pop in and be like yoink and then leave oh my god dude on stream with no indication that it was you doing it wait for that dumbfounded look where did it go where did it go just freeze all of the characters and this little tiny sandal like floats out of the sky and then just like hooks the item and just flies away that would be that would be great wings just fine or have a duck fly in and take it oh come on as it like lands next to the loot and does the like little head bopping thing and just pecks at it and walks away a legendary duck comes just like one shot to you unbelievable unbelievable i see whose side he's on it's enough wizzy we're having a chat later i'm just kidding the vision had never been more clear for the pathfinder and his companions rediscover what had long been lost pave a path through struggle and strife for the countless souls soon to join them in vera always stay the course no matter what lies before them through perseverance they would rebuild civilization and endure whatever was in store for them welcome to asha's pathfinders your dedicated and trusted Ashes of Creation podcast join us as we share in the journey that reignites the embers and rekindles the flames in the hearts of those long left to cinder i am your host phoenix also known as smorg and i'm joined today by my returning pathfinders let's welcome back daedalus hey everyone also welcome back half tilt how are you doing today everyone and the original pathfinder himself welcome back steven sharif how you doing buddy i forgot i'm push to talk hey how's it going oh man always glad to have you back thanks for taking time to be here with us today absolutely it's my pleasure i always enjoyed the discussion thanks and uh before we get dug in too deep friends i got to give a big shout out to the home of this podcast over at asheshq.com the community curated website for ashes of creation also a shout out to all the imperial flames which are the supporters here on twitch patreon youtube and all the places that this podcast is posted weekly and uh friends we've got a special treat coming up here in about a week as promised we have the first chapter of the preview we gave you which was the ashes pathfinder chronicles videos that have started we have the prelude over on the youtube channel um we're gonna have chapter one take the oath coming out by next sunday possibly sooner but for sure by the next podcast it'll definitely be live also we've got a couple apoc logs that are currently out on the youtube channel hope you all have been joining those um so far everybody has given a lot of great feedback so it's been super awesome seeing the response and a lot of fun to do so if you're not really savvy to the lure around the uh well the time of the fall and the apocalypse i definitely would encourage you to check out those and uh happy three years everybody we are now over three years old as a podcast that's crazy yeah it's it's actually really surreal i think because i think we just do these day after day week after week month after month you know you put in the work you do the thing you do it you get back next week you rinse repeat three years seems to go really fast honestly yeah i know i it feels like yesterday was uh if we had the leak come out about the website like the week before we were intending on i think it was massively op yeah we had like what a thousand people on the discord yeah it's like what 60 or 70 i don't even know yeah that was the time it was like like december of what 2016 i think yeah yeah because that was my buddy told me about it and i was like wait what is this game and he's like yeah actually the creation you haven't heard of it and i'm like no he's like oh phoenix you gotta check it out and i saw phoenix on there i was like oh that's my jam it's a phoenix it was made for me it's destiny i tell you but um yeah what's everybody been up to i know steven you've been hard at work with everything you know with the game and everything how's life been how have you been doing life is good i'm in my living room right now i apologize my my office i the carpet's getting replaced tomorrow so all my furniture has moved out of my office so i'm temporarily temporarily set up here the ducks have now learned to come to the door over here in fact i keep that i have a door on each side of this like little desk and each of them are open so the duck will just the ducks will come in walk behind me and walk out the other door and you know they'll do their little little trotting for some food so it's a good setup yeah it's been a lot of fun seeing that on your uh your twitter which by the way i saw you joined like what was it i know i joined twitter i didn't want to have to always use the Ashes of Creation account to respond so i figured i might as well join twitter just get to it huh yeah well we wanted to make this uh episode a little more about what the community wanted to you know ask questions about really kind of curate some of the questions directly from them um sometimes we focus on trying to curate a lot of them you know here on here on the show the pathfinders that are on the show uh we try to like gather some really interesting questions or just things that maybe people haven't asked about and we've had a lot of fun doing that but you know on these specifically these uh anniversary ones where we're lucky enough to get you on we really try to make it more about what the community wants to inquire about obviously we try not to do things that are too repetitive or anything um but you know with that being said uh i'm just gonna kind of dig right in and you know really looking forward to the conversation because we always have a great time here for sure and always as a precursor to the audience you know i i don't i don't review these questions but just know if there are things i can't answer i will tell you that i can't answer them but i'll do my best and try not to get myself in trouble right yeah so um i wanted to ask a question about you know the vision the name of the episode this this uh this week is vision uh the vision is something i reflected on uh with the ashes fam on you know youtube doing an ash's talk and you know kind of inquired previously like do you feel the Ashes of Creation that trumpet studios have really adhered to the vision and you know as someone who's followed this for five years my opinion is that you all have you've stayed the course and quite frankly it's it's a rare thing it just is it's someone who's a creator and follows games and watches development it's just not something you see very often and i'm not even white knight this is just true this is just facts man and uh you know i wanted to ask a question though to get your ideas on something and it's you know when you when you started this project and this game in the studio and you really you know we're like hey we're going to do this um what was your vision or this in an ideal world where you could see the community and the game and how it prospered when you saw the community dynamic and and how the culture of the community could be around this mmorpg have you had a vision of like what you hoped for um yeah i mean there's obviously you know a few visions at hand um i think very early on one of my you know ideas was to create a studio that didn't necessarily adhere to the norm in the industry right you know you always kind of hear sometimes horror stories in the industry about these like perpetual crunch studios or you know just listening to kind of suits as opposed to you know gamers or being kind of marketing driven from a design philosophy and these kind of like free to play aspects and i i wanted to steer clear of that direction and really focus on making a game that um is at the heart of what mmo players want so that was like one vision and then the second vision was like during that process like why don't we just open it up i mean obviously a lot of people said hey you shouldn't open it up like these are ideas that you have other games are going to be watching you if you're successful and you develop some momentum they're going to try to take those ideas and incorporate it themselves and that's a risk right well i mean yes it's a risk but at the same time like the amount of benefit that we have in being transparent and doing monthly updates and keeping people you know as part of that kind of design and outlook for the game is that we get to benefit from the feedback and we can watch in real time as we propose ideas and show stuff and we can we can change that along the way so it's kind of like you know okay there's a risk and there's an opportunity here so that was one of the visions of the transparent development process another vision was um you know getting back to what made me fall in love with mmos in the first place and kind of anticipating that a lot of people out there who are mmo players share you know some of those philosophies about putting like the massive back into massively multiplayer right like that's a big push for us initially was was you know taking something that's not just a beautiful game right like obviously you guys see the environments and um you know you you see what's possible from a graphical fidelity standpoint but like also incorporating hundreds of players inside of a battle you know what i mean and and getting back to to that as opposed to what you know what what many of us have experienced in recent iterations of mmos which is where they where they dumb that down to a lower quantity of players and it's like you know it's just it's just not it's just not what gets people excited or at least it gets me excited um so that was that was another vision too um i guess you know from from a community perspective another thing was like you know there's an opportunity i think where the relationship between a developer and a player there's a there's a type of of two-way street of respect that can be established there um and i feel like i feel like we've we've cultivated a really good community at ashes right without even having the game shipped yet there's already bonds of friendship guilds that are forming podcasts like yours you know these the sense of community and the focus for that community with our project and i'm not saying we're you know unicorn in that sense i've seen other you know in more indie developed um games also kind of try this route as well but i think it's a positive route um i think as long as there's a level of expectation that's set amongst uh you know that community and the developers and they know that this is a respected kind of two-way street where we give you updates you give us feedback we give you more updates you give us more feedback like we're hard at work making something that we our gratification comes from you guys being happy um as weird as that sounds but like that's why people get into gaming i mean if you're an engineer you can make more money not being gaming oriented you can go you know work at some big tech companies that aren't gaming companies and you know probably make 20 30 percent more average salary than you would at in the gaming industry but that's not why people are in the gaming industry as professionals they're in the gaming industry as professionals because they're passionate about what they're making in in the sense that they see the satisfaction and happiness from the people they're making it for um and that's true i think across intrepid is you know every time we do a monthly update our whole studio is tuning in like they're watching what's being said in the stream chat because when they see people get excited about the art they're making or the gameplay that we're showing or the concurrencies that we're hitting and the battle sizes that we're hitting like that's that stuff is is super exciting and motivational for us to keep pushing on because that's why we're doing what we're doing anyways but yeah no i i think um i think the mission's always been the you know to have a good rapport um with the community and and to to involve them in every step of the of the process absolutely i'll definitely go we'll kind of go round robin here and go with that data list man sure i've got more of a class kind of focus question here um so i wanted to ask what your approach would be to make non-healing support classes relevant to group composition and more engaging for players yeah i think you know i think when we think about non-healing support right we're talking about augmenting players capabilities whether that be defensive or offensive or utility um you know these these types of non-healing based support classes are really about like pushing other classes and even their own beyond what they're normally capable of if that support wasn't present um what makes that engaging in my at least in my opinion um with regards to these non-support classes is traditionally we've seen other mmos you know you have these kind of like we call them buff bots because because essentially they're just there to give you buffs and then they're they're you know you really this isn't all games but the old old-school games like lineage 2 that i played or um uh you know tara or ion or whatever i would play these games and and they would really be relevant only when the buffs came off so i was like okay give us more bubs um and and that was trash in my opinion i i don't like that so when you think about like how we're going to incorporate let's say the bard for example you know this is going to be opportunities where um based on proximity based on your uh uh your mobility and placement within the battle you're going to have more significance so it's going to be to a degree a tactical type scenario for those non-healing support classes to be cognizant of you know where on the battlefield they need to be positioned in in in connection with the group that they're trying to augment or support right and so that that gives a little bit more tactical sense to these non-healing support classes that's more relevant to them than other classes per se um and i think that's going to be a fun type of game to to experience especially for specific pve encounters where there is you know zone denial that's present because of the skills that are being used by either raid boss or you know dungeon boss or different types of ads that can come onto your party you know being being kind of um tactical in that idea is is i think going to be a fun interaction for those classes makes sense to me well i'll hand over to half till i think he's got a few questions for you awesome love it so i have a question about npcs um i'm curious to know if there's going to be kind of like a life cycle over the course of of a day with npcs if mayors are going to have any control over like a changing of the guard where maybe there's a a five-minute window that somebody could sneak into your node during a node war um just how are npcs going to behave in the game or are they going to be a little bit more static in their in their post i think it depends obviously on the npc you know we have behavior trees that incorporate you know waypoints and that have different types of activities that are going to be present those might be more situated to the organizational npcs and not necessarily the guard structure of a particular node as you brought up in an example um but you're gonna you're gonna see i think a collection of both right where you will see um behaviors that reflect you know some period of time in the day and you can expect some set like night and day or some type of rotational period but then you're also going to have static npcs that are always going to be present and there's a need for static npcs in an mmo world right players have players play at different times um and you don't want to necessarily limit you know the access to some you know nighthawk player versus a day player uh just because of of when they have the ability to play so to speak so you're going to see combinations of both um but i think where we place the npc rotations that are relevant those would be kind of um you know rotations that exist perhaps within an hour not so much within a day so to speak so there might be five minutes of some changing of you know an an organization's um acolytes in a temple or something uh and and that might be that might be because obviously there's a quest related to that rotation so players are going to want to have to be acute and when they determine that you know going to that location it's going to have to coincide with you know something that's at play with the behavior tree of those npcs awesome okay thank you nice so i got i got a question from a buddy of mine he's a youtuber named deltia he does over at delta's gaming um i know he did uh pretty sure he was one of the earliest uh i remember deltia right i saw him at pax one year i think yeah yeah he was over there with twitch i was uh hanging out with him yeah yeah he's back at the grind again and i was like hey man you want to ask steven something because i thought it'd be fun he's always got good questions especially about like you know class game dynamics things like that and uh he asked a good question it was one that i i had to ask today and he said how does ash has prevent the power game between the casual player and the hardcore now this is gonna be kind of long but it will help with context i think so regard to the power creep between like my biggest concern is that folks who invest tons of time not having a cap um eso just removed their cp cap but also limited the amount of slottable boost limiting power other games like bdo or warhammer online had these massive insane grinds that would alight this infinite power creep and uh so what's the long-term incentive for people to keep playing and working towards improvement but also what keeps new players relevant in power i think that's that's one of the age-old dilemmas of mmos yeah is is striking the balance between you know the varying degrees of play time that players have available to them and spend within the game um because time in a sense is a direct you know correlation to progression right the amount of time you spend in a game you want to see progress from that time spent right um and then that progress should be fun and engaging so you know that's the general gameplay you loop you come to expect from a persistent world is having you know time equate to to progression um the way i think that ash's and mmos conquer this to a degree and i and i want to caveat this answer by saying that i don't think there is an answer here that will satisfy everyone um depending on where you end up on the hardcore casual side you know you're going to you're going to have a different feeling with regards to this but trying to strike a balance is obviously um you know one of our endeavors so the way the way we kind of approach this is we have multiple types of progression right and those those varying lanes that exist within the world depending on the amount of time that you have available to you there will be segments of those of those progression paths that are that are more immediately achievable and that kind of respects the casual player and then there will be um you know achievements and or progression that require a significant chunk of time uh and even those casual players that have the ability to to achieve that it'll just be at a further date out than the more hardcore players right the other important thing that i think ashes does differently from other mmorpgs is that the world is a direct reflection of the activities of players whether those activities are from a hardcore player or a casual player there are certain progression points that occur as a result of the mass populous doing something and traditionally in mmorpgs you're going to see a larger population of casual players than you do of hardcore players and that's just the way the cookie crumbles from a population standpoint and because of that and the way that nodes collect experience and advance as a result of player activity those casual players will actually have more impact on node progression than the hardcore players will at least as i predict because of the sheer quantity disproportionate between the two different groups of people now with that in with that aspect taken into consideration as nodes advance and those player populations move you tend to see more hardcore grouped players progress further okay so think of like think of a map of an mmo in a traditional circular difficulty going inwards to this kind of you know bullseye in the center where you have the most difficult content right that's traditionally how many of us have experienced mmos you start on the outskirts of these starting areas and you move inward to the map and these different zones and and that's how you have this kind of difficulty progression so you may see in ashes the smaller hardcore group of players progress further into the end into the late game content right but they don't have the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the more casual or at least lagging behind them larger population has near the outskirts so i think traditionally that's going to create greater influence from the casual players or at least i don't know if i want to always refer to those casual players at least the non-hardcore players i can say um uh and and what what influence they have over the world's development so it's a give and take right um you know casual and hardcore players are each going to have levels of progression within certain paths that differ from one another and um striking a balance between what the casual players can do with the amount of time that they have and feel accomplished in that in that time i think we provide for in every progression path that's available whether it be the adventuring class the crafting and gathering and artisanship the organizational the guilds the node system the citizenship the board building i mean all of these things impact the world in one way shape or form and there's relevant aspects to to both hardcore and casual players in each of those progression paths amazing answer thank you very much all right i've got one that's uh more related to game world and changes and this is coming from truly in the community uh are there any plans to put mechanics or systems in the game to ensure that content in the game world changes just as an example if one guild has owned a castle for multiple months during the next castle siege could the attackers get some kind of buff which gets stronger with each siege until that guild loses control of the castle or and i guess this is coming from me here as well is it would there be maybe an npc event that might be triggered if uh um if a guild has a castle for too long um so i'll answer that in two parts i guess with regards to your example i i wouldn't from a design philosophy agree with penalizing success um and if there's if there is a design issue with maybe the defenders having too easy at time versus attackers then that's a different question that would be a design assessment right and a balancing act um but if a guild or a group of people or citizens you know of a node are successful because they they have superior organizational skills uh they have a superior strategy and they're better at the tactics of a of combat their class composition is more geared towards pvp like if that's the case i don't see the reason why we'd want to penalize that with an event-based system but regard regarding your original question of will we see things change in the world uh i think ass asses ash's premise oh god that's gonna get close all the time i've done it i think i think ash's ash's whole premise is to incorporate events and changes and evolution that uh not only represents player activity but also incorporates you know random story driven interruptions to the normal flow of the world and whether that be through blocking off specific roadways that are like you know the lifeblood of a particular node's incoming resources or uh having you know random raid boss appear in a zone that never traditionally they did before and as a result it incurs you know a complete change of climate that's now affecting crop rotations and only specific crop can come from that zone and now the whole economy of the world has been thrown into chaos because no one's been able to down this boss yet we can't get the corn we need in order to build the reagents on the alchemical side to create this crap you know like that's the type of domino effect type system or event you want that appears in a natural non-injunction way but it presents a problem to the players to that they have to accomplish something at least if they want to change it back to the status quo those i think are compelling events and those i think are are ways that the world can introduce an element of randomness um that reflects what we experience in the real world that's that's awesome very very good answer i'm sure truly i know i'm happy with that answer i'm sure it truly is too so thank you wasn't even my question i'm happy with that answer also my real name is ash so i totally understand the miss speech it happens a lot oh that would suck to have that happen for you sometimes it's on purpose sometimes it's not you know i try to live up to it either way all right i got a question here from clumsy ninja he asked how is the information gathered for libraries when a library updates the last known location values for resources will it be when a player walks past those resources when they interact with the resources or will they have to interact with the library to show the info that's a very specific question and while i have design papers on that we haven't implemented the system yet so let me just preface this answer with prior to implementation things can change and after implementation things can definitely change so be aware of that um but i will give you a brief kind of answer on how we anticipate that so areas in the world are broken up into into zones on the back end that we have right and as a player moves into a particular area and let's say they find a resource node and they go back and report that to the library it will be able to update automatically when in that particular zone that received a report has a change in resource structure um so it's kind of like you think about um the shroud of war and maybe any rts as you might have played right initially prior to exploring a particular area it might be blacked out and when you do explore it but you move away from active vision you have it grayed out you can see new structures that appear there because it's been discovered and it's grayed out but you can't see troop movement you can't see like that in a similar sense the world and ashes is broken up into these zones and as a player reports to the library we can see update or play citizens can see updated uh information for new resource nodes in that in that area if it has a report um yeah and and and i think that only works for for uh for resources there's other stuff that's available through the library as well from an information standpoint um that might have a report period so essentially if i come back and give a report on an area that report may expire after a period of time let's say a week at which point it'll require a new report in order to update the existing information right so you'll get that shroud of war functionality for the week after a report but if it doesn't receive a follow-up report after that expiration period then it will not be updating real time beautiful okay nice so i got a question from dan frozen here uh instead of town's population is 40 tolnar thirty percent pyri thirty percent in purine would look more elven or more tolmar i'm sorry real quick what were those percentages again forty tolnar thirty pyrite and thirty imperium so it would be tolerant so remember even though it's a sub even though i refer to it as subcultures um the uh period parent race uh doesn't really exist anymore right that's where these sub races were where they came from so the purine is like the parent race of the pirae and of the empyrean uh elves both are elves right uh species-wise but they but they differ in culture so it's not as though they combine their you know cultural um contribution to a node's progression and then the node yields that type of of culture um it is much very much so a plurality of contribution amongst the participating sub-races so each of them uh uh you know are individually calculated i've got a question from uh giolis de nor uh specifically on the economy um and he was asking if you could explain what plans might be in effect to regulate the economy in such a way to stop inflation or deflation or at least address the potential impact of inflation and deflation of the currency as nodes or npc vendors increase and decrease in levels sure um this is also one of the very difficult uh problems that and mmos uh exist right and that's because you you have designs and those designs assume certain types of participation numbers or player contributions to systems especially economic systems and i think any i think the most important rule of mmo development is whatever expectation you have on the players prepared to be completely wrong so so with that being said however one of the natural counterpoints to the problem of inflation in an mmo economy is going to be gold sinks right and there is a significant degree of sinks that are present not just gold but also material sinks uh there's deconstruction mechanics um you know all of these go to kind of curb inflation over a period of time in an open economy of an mmo system um so that's our first and foremost you know combat against and it's going to take some balancing through the alphas and betas obviously we're going to collect as much as we can information on that we'll do balance passes consistently on those types of on those numbers one of the other things um and i know the question is with regards to specifically vendors but i would say that i'm not a fan of the idea of of enacting levers to control an open economy i think the laws of demand and of supply and demand take precedent in any type of trade related economy system where crafting and gathering is a central component of access to to progressive gear especially when that crafting and gathering is respected and is on par with you know the top gear that you can achieve in the game um that is going to be uh obviously an important component where you don't want any outside influence you want the economy to take its course with regards to vendors and merchants you know outside obviously of the sinks there's some ideas behind having adaptive price points that could be present in shops we'll see if that's a if that's a possibility it would take into account the server economy um so we we obviously keep tabs on that in the back end we can see logging of you know how much gold is being generated versus sunk and how the economy is growing as a result of that and you can have adaptive tables present in merchant in the merchant place areas that can affect prices of high grade or ac late game economic points right so you don't want to impact the new player experience obviously they don't come into a world that's you know fraught with money and have a lot of money themselves they still have to work their way up so you'd have to you this would only be applicable to certain items that have relevancy across the spectrum of adventuring levels so that you cannot impact the lower level people i like it i love that approach yeah i can't wait for this crafting system i'll be honest yeah for sure all right i have a question from wizzy mcnasty will a non-combatant be flagged for looting bodies no non a non-combatant only flags if they attack another non-combatant or combatant yeah follow up on this by the way wizzy she's a mod here wizzy mcnasty i just want to say this i saw your question it's not being asked so stephen this is no there's no reason that i actually answer this but she was like i wanted to know if we're safe with phoenix that's my name right with as a master leader or will gm looting revenge be too strong i remember that that was right i ca i i was filming and you totally ninja looted the spider boss i didn't totally remember that he still thinks i did diluted no [Laughter] there were no rules there was no in the game i might honestly i don't think i would if i were to do the funny little like just you know check in on some erg as he's playing and steal something from him it would be like only during like you know the crescendo of his gaming experience he's downing a boss and like he's been spending a lot of time to get there then maybe i just might pop in and be like yoink and then leave oh my god dude on stream with no indication that it was you doing it just wait for that dumbfounded look where did it go where did it go just freeze all of the characters and this little tiny sandal like outside of the sky and then just like hooks the item and just flies away that would be that would be great wings just fine or have a duck fly in and take it oh come on as it like lands next to the loot and does the like little head bopping thing and just pecks at it and walks away very great a legendary duck comes like one shot to you unbelievable unbelievable i see whose side he's on it's enough wizzy we're having a chat later i'm just kidding oh man this is from grunt tag man steven what do you see as a typical day for a band of adventurers that choose to sell out to the ocean aside from other players will this band of seafaring adventures possibly run into npc pirates at sea sea monsters storms uh all of the above question mark yeah it's like i mean obviously so there's an npc structure that exists out in the oceans right um these take the form of sailing npc you know fortresses whether that be large frigate or galleon based ships and they take the form of raid bosses they take the form of general sea based npcs there's um treasures that you can find on land and explore out at sea uh as obviously one of the missions is why you would be going out to sea there's escort missions that you can participate in you know there are uh for coastal nodes there are hooks out to points of interest that take control of harbors harbors have a significant amount of influence over the waters that's their their primary hook right um and um you know some of those are straightforward and interact but with an npc to receive a quest for and some of those have to be discovered at sea um so you know these are all these are all things that are you know make that type of area in an mmo um exciting right you don't just want to have water for water sake you want to have water because it's a different experience from a content perspective than what's on land uh and in order to be a different experience you have to have that content yeah the uh nerd excitement is real right now yeah it's beautiful uh we've got another question this is uh there's been some chat around corruption uh in uh in the chat here and we've got a question from the community around that as well so grumpy guy had asked how critical will the reduction in stats be when one becomes corrupted uh critical reduction stats so um i mean the answer is it scales with the amount of corruption the player has right so um if you accrue you know very little corruption you murder one person the impact is going to be relatively negligent uh if you go on a murder spree and you have you know 10 pks under your belt then you might start feeling a significant dampening to your skill effects against other players you know that i don't want to give necessarily a number or curve for players to extrapolate prior to us having the ability to actually test these ideas right and where those numbers are going to lie but i would say what is the intent behind that dampening the intent isn't to limit the fun of the player the intent is to provide a give and take or a risk versus reward and the risk of continuing down the road of accruing corruption is not only the loss of your gear and you know amplified death effects uh but also your ability to perform in that activity ashes is a comprehensive game it is not a pvp focused or a pve focused it is a it is a comprehensive pvx game and as a result these systems are all interconnected and have to coexist with one another with certain types of mechanisms um that can uh you know provide that give and take that that push and shove makes sense all right this was one of my questions i was talking about on stream a few a couple weeks ago we were talking about the crafting system and the discussion around progress bars came up so when you start to craft an item more difficult items or higher tier items take longer you watch progress bar goes all the way up sometimes you're sitting there for 45 seconds a minute and you're idle while you're doing that i'm curious where your stance is um between an impactful time for the quality of item you're crafting versus respect for players time and feel free to clip that sound if you want to add that while you're uh so their respect for players time is going to be directly correlated to the benefit received right so um first point is going to be that the crafting times those aren't really where time is used so to speak time is really kept on the processing side um so you have gathering and processing of crafting right um you're not going to see these crafting times either in you know i mean you will see varying obviously crafting times that exist between professions um uh but i would say the predominance of if i understand your question correctly of how long it takes to do a thing that exists primarily in the processing side so yeah and then the processing obviously how that time is determinant from either being you know large or small that is in reference to the quality of the processed good right so the higher quality good and the larger bulk processing is going to carry over time processes that exist for the player now the good thing is is that these times are going to be unattended so you don't have to be there right when you're processing the goods you're going to have a system in place a mechanic within either one of your freehold buildings or crafting or processing stations that you've that you've created and you are going to have uh the ability to place a an amount of goods based on the rating of that particular processing station that you've built uh or that exists and you're going to have an amount to put in there and then there's going to be a correlating time uh that can also be in uh deep decreased if you spend time increasing the capabilities and quality of your processing station as well so there's kind of a progression tier within that system also and that's going to be very important as you get to kind of very late game processed materials that are required right because these some of these things might have days to process within a station right but if you have uh spent the time and done the work to advance that processing station you could cut that down considerably perhaps even greater than 50 percent right and that's going to have a significant impact on your ability to either control markets or to create goods um you know whatever your perspective is as a processor okay i really like that that's perfect it makes those long days to craft resources really really valuable and limited in the economy and it's going to make the people that can process them a little bit more lucrative and sought after so yeah you still get a chance to go and play the game and that's very respectful players time while achieving the impactful experience yeah i mean that's the important thing is like in a lot of older games you know they did incorporate kind of that time spent as also a restriction on your ability to do other things in the game um which i think is an antiquated way of thinking um it already it needs to be considerable in achieving these things anyways and having the ability to process them that spends time now you don't have to also add time that you're taking away from the player and going out and experiencing the game's content right um so uh yeah love it thank you awesome i've got one here from uh well from uh dj flemy phlegm one of my mods do you plan on including class specific quests in the game for example defeating some sort of personal challenge to test your ability as a level 30 battle mage yeah they're always going to be class specific quests i mean that exist in the game and the reason for that is because classes i mean there's going to be a lot of shared quests but there's also going to be class specific quests and the reason for that is um is that classes are some classes are better at others than doing certain things and that'll play itself out through the general community quest right that's fine uh but there are certain periods from a designer's perspective where you want to make you know make an encounter be the antithesis of what a player is good at it also gives them perspective because we have a more fluid class combination system where you can play the line in your traditional wool by adding a secondary class that's different from your primary classes role the benefit of having these class specific quests early on especially in an archetype is that you can come to a determination and have greater experience for the things you're not good at so you know how to progress your class in the future with the things you have access to that are different from what you're good at so that's that's a good thing to have and and uh i mean there's also like you know there's going to be profession specific quests you know i as a mage and perhaps more interested in the working of the essence than let's say a fighter or a tank who is who is interested in perfecting their tacticianry or that's the word their tactics or um if it's not a word it should be wrong okay there you go so you want to give them storyline that's relevant and make sense for them you know to their class progression you know if i'm a fighter i should be going to a barracks and learning from this dude early on when i later later on if i want to take on that mage secondary and i'm more you know more arcane in the things i do or more at based in the essence then then yeah it makes sense for my also again for a catered quest to me that lets me focus on that route and the narrative nice okay um got a question from the community from friendly neighbor um and this is kind of specifically as you were ideating on Ashes of Creation were there any other names that you considered for the game other than patches of creation yeah there were a lot of names um there was um so let me i guess let me correct this so early on we had a code name for the project the code name was the world of origins and i don't know if we've ever actually said that in the past i don't know um obviously that ties into you know the lore um and you know there's understanding there but then when we decided that that wasn't as catchy you know as a name how else can we incorporate elements of the story or this lore um that uh make for a more compelling title um and you know we we put together i think it was myself peter uh bard i think um and we we kind of put together an excel spreadsheet you know all words that we feel reference in some way shape or form the story um and then how can we make combinations of those and there were like eight candidates uh that came to compelling combinations but ashes of creation was i felt the the best for both representation from the just a cyclical nature of what this what what this universe's narrative is um but also a a potent reminder of the gruesome and and absolutely horrific story that exists on vera and within the ancients and how that goddess of creation played a role in planning pre-planning this whole experience out from saving her creation to bringing them back you know this it's just a i thought i felt was the most compelling one any hints of some of the other names able to share you know i don't know i just i know the code name which was the original name of the campaign right the world of origin uh in pathfinder um the other names that came out of the kind of word game that we played i don't really remember them i could look back and see but ashes of creation stood out so much from them that that's just i never really look back on what those other options were fair fair yeah i gotta say too before we get before half till it digs in uh i am like super excited to find out about this whole story between the goddess of fate goddess of creation and the gateways and like how that all how that all got like you know planned out and everything and obviously i think the light pack is going to have a big a big role in some parts of that but man i'm looking forward to that story for sure but yeah i have tilt yeah the light pact is yeah i love it man love it all right i have a question from psychophobic will guild castles also be instanced for the initial ai raid to capture the castle or will it be an open world raid the first time around so that players can sabotage each other's efforts before a capture um we haven't really actually just to caveat this question we haven't we haven't determined that guild excuse me that castle sieges will be instanced yet um and as a matter of fact right now they're in the open world so that might not come to pass um but also because your quest your question is about the original ownership and the npcs that exist within them um uh those are also in the open world until unless we come across a test that that suggests we should otherwise consider it instance very good man so this one was from and i see i see one um you know just a reminder participation participations for castles does require registration right on the on the guild's behalf and what that registration allows you to do is to be a victor is to have the potential to win it it grants the ability of the guild leader and or potentially officers um if we determine to go down that route uh the ability to seal the the ownership of the castle um so you could have people who pass by see there's a castle siege in progress and just jump in and participate for funsies but they're not having the ability and that initial assault against the npcs to actually win the castle they could just be there and participate the same could be true also for when a castle is owned by a guild and assaulted by another guild you could see some players participate in that seats if they're not registered the the the problem is for being a registered attacker you have the ability to respawn on the siege field if you're not a registered attacker or defender and you die on the siege field you are ported very very far away to a very far respawn point so there's a significant disadvantage in that regard as well nice okay so this one's from t elf will they now show what tier and which type of buildings the structures they sell will pl replace on freeholds we will be uh we haven't yet um but we will be and the reason you know why we're kind of waiting uh in that regard is because there's still some definitions that have to be determined for that system right um and i'm always hesitant to release information especially on designs and systems um until i'm fairly confident that those are going to be the actual final systems and designs um so so that should be relatively soon um i would say uh it's going to be some time after alpha one but um um i would say sometime this year probably will have a an article that kind of details out what that is awesome all right um question here um from horrendous around the alpha one zone map in progression over the testing cycles so the alpha one zone was supposed to be around 20 to 25 percent of the game world map will we see additional areas opening up in similar size during the testing um or will we be playing in the current map for the entire testing cycle the alpha one map if i recall is 70 70 square kilometers i think so it's not too far off that 20 mark uh there are some additional areas that have still yet to be incorporated into the production client uh that are present in the dev client some additional dungeons and stuff um so it's it's possible that there will be some addition to the map uh before the alpha one in june um but um we're not too far off from that 20 mark very cool and honestly just to caveat that as well um you know you have what's you have in this alpha one map that is the playable area and then outside of that area are additional zones that may not be accessible during alpha one but as they are they are there and part of the map um they're just not as developed right so we might not get the time to get to those parts that are on the kind of outskirts and borders of the map area right now they're just encapsulating the zone itself cool thank you right now all right my last one here is from trob will the game have optimal cookie cutter or best builds in terms of race augments archetype or gear set or will variables like time of the year celestial alignment religion node strength impact stats and effectiveness of a player making it harder to sim the best builds um i'll break that up i guess into two questions so are there events that impact class effectiveness in the world um well i don't think so um maybe i guess as an ancillary aspect from maybe equipment production or um what they have access to from like an enchantment or tattoo standpoint that those could be affected by world events but generally i would say um that the answer to the meta question this is i guess a third relevant problem in mmos designing so that there's not a obvious meta um i think that ash's addresses that uh in the best way possible which is making your build very situational um and what that means is the effectiveness and and or application of your skill selection choice your gear kit that is going to depend on your adversary or what the encounter presents you um so in that regard you have a stab at breaking the kind of meta problem but ultimately then it just goes down a step further to well according to this situation will there be a meta um and i think that the answer is there's going to be more effective gear kits for certain situations and those gear kits will be optimal that's the that's a whole point of presenting a variance of difficulty ratings that have different types of of you know rock paper scissor situations um is that you should have a corresponding chase to some type of gear selection right and the demand the the the the balance of what situations are presented to the player in the game is going to depend on the progression of the node system which nodes have activated which types of points of interest and spotters to kind of present a you know push and shove with relationship of the world and the adversary you face so that's going to determine which types of challenges are predominant and then there will be a correlating class that that that is you know overly effective against that type of adversary and there will be a corresponding gear chase that is represented as well but that dynamic changes in a fluid world where nodes can disappear so what might be in flavor one month you know might not be the flavor two months later and i think that presents players with a very compelling game play purpose with a chase you know oftentimes you just have a very vertical power scale and that determines chase but when you have a variety of relevance across certain types of adversaries and that variety changes over time because of player activity this and then that affects the economy and the crafter system and who was producing what for what demand and everything gets shaken up that's a very kind of fun uh environment to exist in it presents a more dynamic situation rather than a quote-unquote cookie cutter type uh selection that's yeah there's so many things the node system to me was the biggest workaround to that is you don't know what you don't know you don't know what gear is out there until it's found by unlocking the nodes then it might only fit into one of 60 one of the 64 builds and play styles and then you're you're trying to craft all this gear and your caravan gets assault and you lose everything you got to start all over again anyway so you know there you go perseverance friend actions in a nutshell right love it love it speaking of ashes i gotta say that that dying effect that we saw oh man i was nerding so hard over that that was so i was like oh i was i was getting tired of uh okay so i'll tell you what prompted that i was in a play test and you know we're doing we do internal play tests right and i was in it i was in a play test and uh we did something where we killed all of the players around oh they're all bots and they all died around us and i just saw all of these stupid tombstones above their heads and the tombstones are totally temporary right i said we needed the tombstone early on to kind of like i think we were trying to find the interactable like uh player inventory or whatever we couldn't quite hit the so we put like a placeholder tombstone there and that just prompted me to reminded me of like oh now i remember what i wanted to do with the death effects let's go ahead and let jim know to start working on the actual death effects because i want to get rid of these damn tombstones because i want the pile of ash with a little simmering smoke uh presents so i went to him and i told him you know like this is obviously a representation of the spark of essence that's granted to the player as through their you know creation by the gods um and they correlate to these ley lines and locations that exist around the world the respawn points right um and in a way we i want to see just like the phoenix the avatar of the goddess of creation their body burns away and their spirit leaves them to rejoin back with the essence and reform into what their self was which is that kind of rebirth right um so i explained that to jim and then i and then i gave him a few reference points from other types of you know disintegration effects that exist out there and he came up with a real great first pass uh but that's not even its true end form so i was there's a way for that like this has got to be the coolest way to die in a game ever like i'm gonna go and i just killed this corrupt player let's go sift through their ashes to find their stuff like how cool is that i know you know and the other thing that you know just me as a player i've always had problems in the past with playing games from a story perspective an immersion perspective is that like hey my body dies and then my body now has been duplicated and appears elsewhere with all of my original gear and clothes and all that kind of stuff right i was like maybe i can't get away with the gear and clothes thing that'll have to be a little magical but at least i can explain the phoenix that everybody knows the phoenix story right yeah it's beautiful so i got two more i'm gonna try to squeeze in real quick and then we're gonna wrap this up if that's cool one a vision of crimson asked would you consider letting us use purchase cosmetics that cannot be used in-game as craftable items for display in our houses for example stuffed pets snow globe houses armor stands stuff like that if i understand the question correctly it's referencing cosmetics that have been previously released and are no longer available for purchase and allowing players who come later and don't own those cosmetics to instead have visual representation through decor items in their home well said used purchase cosmetics that cannot be used in game but all the cosmic can be yeah all cosmetics can be used in games yeah so there's your answer and one from mick macmuck and i felt like this was a good one to end on in terms of questions um because well we're getting ready for alpha right soon right yes yeah we are definitely getting ready our late night hours and the bloodshot eyes are getting real ready for us the late night hours the bloodshot eyes are ready to deliver alpha one to all of you uh mick mcmuck said many of us are looking forward to the nda free alpha footage what three things would steven like to draw our attention to as a good sign of progress at this early testing stage good question very good question um i would say first and foremost is obviously going to be the numbers of players and npcs that you can have uh in a single area um and you know we haven't uh really done a lot of optimization for that we've done a lot of architectural work and changes and that's what a lot of the testing early on has been at a more architectural level but optimizing uh there hasn't been too much and i feel like we've hit a really good place to be especially with using unreal engine 4 um you know i i'm actually not quite sure of other live unreal engine 4 games that have the types of concurrent on-screen numbers of live players with thousands of npcs as well in the area i'm sure i can think of them later i don't know maybe not but um i would say that's the first and foremost uh the second thing is i would say the quality of the of the world around you what you're seeing visually right it's one thing to have a technically performant game and it's another thing to have a visually beautiful thing so i would say um you know the target is obviously to incorporate both of those um and uh i think that if you look around the world around you um you're gonna see something that is very immersive and uh looks really good um and then the third third thing i would say um the application integration of the designs that the mechanics that exist i mean we're talking about the three compelling aspects of any video game we're talking about technical performance visual uh uh beauty and uh compelling mechanics um so when i when we talk about mechanics we're talking about seeing the nodes take this experience in advance see those nodes propagate in real time new quest hooks and merchants and npcs and buildings and then seeing those nodes influence the world and the points of interest around you and changing the spawners of of monsters and and accessing dungeon points and and seeing you know this these systems come to life seeing a government be formed within your node voting for a mayor having that mayor elect building projects having citizens join the node and have housing available to them and go work on those those building projects so they can unlock different progression paths with the crafting system and collecting resources and process i mean there's all i guess when you think about projects that you watch get developed and there aren't too many of them but there are some out there i think ashes has done a great job in in showing coming from there to here and bringing the players along every step of the way and now starting to see this in fruition in an in a playable alpha that you know people are are going to be streaming and showing but you need to keep in mind and this is a very important important important part is that you can see the progress in those three dynamics but we are still in our first alpha we're excuse me we're about to be entering our first alpha and this is an actual developmental alpha which means that you're going to see bugs and you're going to see not much polish and you're going to see you know systems that that might break and there has to be an understanding that in order for you to see the bigger picture which is where the game will be by launch you got to look past that stuff in alpha you can comment on things like certain mechanics or design philosophies or you know changes to you know the art or something like that you can talk about those things but you have to keep in mind that the polish is not going to be there the bugs are going to be present and this is an alpha so look at the progress but look at it with a grain of salt yeah i think you know i think my like as a creator i think that's like probably one of the most important things you can do is as a creator when you're streaming or you're creating contents to really like acknowledge the state of where the game is at and to be you know constructive in your criticism i think that's probably the most important thing you can do when you create content around a game that's in development like this setting those proper expectations yeah so critically important for people's first view first opinion of it because they're going to form their first opinion on that and let me say one other thing i am i'm not a fan of of white knights but i will say it is not a white knight response to say this game is still an alpha absolutely not and that is that is a perfectly acceptable and something that should be reminded because the majority of viewers who will look at this alpha one are not going to be our community we have a very large community but the majority of viewers will actually be people who don't know anything about ashes um because of just probably the amount of press and people who are going to stream it you know there's going to be a lot of unknowing eyes on the game so it's it's our job as a community to remind those players whoa whoa you're not seeing a game you're seeing an alpha and there is a difference between those two things so that's a very important thing and most players most people don't even know what the difference is between those things so really actually it's going to have half effect on somebody to say it's an alpha what the hell's an alpha this is a game i'm saying it's you know what yeah yeah definitely um and you know what i definitely gotta respect your time stephen i appreciate you giving us a little extra to wrap all those questions up um and you know to everybody who's been a part of the show for like three plus years now like seriously a shout out to all of you there's been so many people that have just consistently been here week after week you know month after month persevering stay in the course like a pathfinder does really appreciate all of you and all of your investment you know and dropping questions for the show or being here when we're live it means a lot definitely appreciate it and that the show wouldn't be what it is without the the game we all love and are following and without the community like all of you that you know persevere week to week waiting for it patiently or impatiently whichever the case may be but um definitely appreciate you taking time to be here steven uh as always absolutely love it you guys always have fun conversations yeah definitely a lot of fun having here too and uh gentlemen why don't we let everybody know where they can find you what your domains are when you're not on the show so they can come catch you when you're live or doing your thing dayless all right you can catch me on twitter at the ashton herald and on youtube youtube.com the ashen herald and i'm on twitter at half underscore tilt or on twitch and youtube slash half tilt gamer yeah stephen you wanna do you wanna promo your your own twitter now oh my god i have a twitter uh you can find ashes anywhere at ashes of creation and then you can find me on twitter uh what's my twitter handle at stephen j street i got you covered oh steven j sure has my middle name thank you yes my name is joseph um but yeah steven j street all right awesome and uh listen if you uh if you enjoy the show you can leave a message at our call at six four number one one you can leave something for our pathfinder grunt to dip into that email at ash's pathfinders gmail.com get something there you can uh if you do write us on itunes uh please leave a five star review if you're willing and if you leave a comment we read those live on the show as well it really helps with the algorithm on on uh itunes if you leave a review and comments are always welcome and uh with that being said friends you know might be the end of the show today but remember whether you're here catching us live on the show um leaving comments whatever it is you're listening to it on the podcast places you two are on ash's pathfinder we appreciate your time and uh much love to you all much love to Intrepid Studios and until next time friends live your best lives stay safe out there walk in the light have a great night everyone