Talk:2017-05-19 Livestream

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Character count: 54023 | Duration in seconds:3331 | Characters per second: 16.22

1:49

Welcome everybody to our Friday livestream hope everybody had an awesome week and is ready for the weekend we here at Intrepid Studios are pretty excited because we just passed our 12,000 backers

12,000 backers it's moving quickly

I know it's very crazy I think in a couple of days we might actually be the number one Kickstarterd MMORPG

Ever

Ever holy moly

Sinking in

That's pretty awesome so with our 12,000 backer goal I think that unlocks the Kickstarter exclusive dye set

Yes

Yes so that's going to be some

All sorts of fancy colors

Pretty cool looking people out in the world we have a special guest with us today Mr. Dungeon Crawler Network founder himself Aggelos welcome

Hey guys thank you for having me back I guess I didn't scare you off last time

No actually I think a funny thing about that Aggelos is a lot of people were really impressed with your ability and podcast quality and that's one of the reasons why we reached out to you to do our official live stream Q&A is you had pretty positive reception I think you run a good good ship over there the Dungeon Crawler Network

It's almost like you've been doing this for a while

Few years yeah a little while wow I see you put the pressure on now it's like hey you did great so we're gonna bring you on and hopefully you don't mess up so

You better not

Well you'll be happy to know that in addition to doing this live stream for the Q&A today we're also going to be one showing off our demon skin that's in the leader of men package as well as some additional pre-alpha gameplay footage

Yep

That I think Tristan oh my gosh

Oh oh there it is

There's the demon the demon has appeared wow that's a pretty good looking skin

It is I like it I'm pretty excited about seeing this

I think you're cutting off the horns though let's pull it down a little bit just a little bit pull that demon down

There it is there yeah very pointy

Have a fight fight

Those are our [laughter]

You got some Street Fighter juking thing going on here you know

Yeah

And then we also have the gameplay footage that we're actually recording right now it's gonna be of a one of the great divine gateways

Yeah

Yes and I believe it's in the Aela starting area

Yep

4:22

Very cool again that's it's gonna be pre-alpha footage so you know it's gonna look unfinished unpolished but

Right

You know

It's what we got the show so we're gonna show you

Right exactly we're pretty excited um so Aggelos take it easy on us

You had a couple questions for us I've heard

I think I sent you a few just a handful maybe

Just to be clear I believe it was around 70 questions yeah I don't think we're gonna be able to get through all of those unless they're all yes or no only

Right we got 50 seconds per question

50 seconds per question alright alright let's do this you guys ready cuz I'm ready?

We're ready

5:01

Alright so I broke everything down into different subsections so I mean the first thing I'm going to try to hit up is combat because that seems to be something that people like and a lot of people have questions about tanking 'cause that is the thing now you mentioned before the tanks will have abilities that will more or less force an enemy to attack them instead of a weaker target but how does the blocking work will there be like an active blocker um you know do you block all projectiles in like a template around the person or you know just as a thing aimed at the tank and or is it even a toggle ability?

Um so I think there's a [cross-talk]

Little bit of the above yeah

I was gonna say yeah I think there's a little combination of both there

Yeah

And I think that a blocking can refer to a couple things one it can be referring to incoming damage and/or projectiles or hits that are against you personally and then your ability to exert control over the battlefield potentially with creating zones where damage cannot pass through and/or effects cannot go through

Right

With walls potentially and stuff like that but I think there's a mixture of the two the two of those

Yeah the tank's going to be focused on like changing the like how the battlefield flows basically so you know if they need to stop a charge right they can probably do that in a number of different ways so it's it's going to be about controlling the battlefield not necessarily controlling character

Sure

But but yeah trying to deny people entry to areas and to take damage on behalf of others

Okay

Yeah and I think one of the primary methods of taking damage on behalf of others is potentially through a taunt skill that can also be effective not just in PvE but in PvP as well

In PvP too so they can target swap or force other people to target swap to them so that they get you know a little bit of time as the focus and kind of make it difficult for for the opposing DPS clauses

Yeah

6:48

Right now you actually mentioned something that's really fascinating guess what this is gonna make it like 71 questions cuz it's a follow up to what you just said

Okay [cross-talk]

You were just mentioning controlling the battlefield are we talking about like aerial denial and with collision like being able to put walls and stuff up for collision?

Yes

Ahh

Yeah absolutely

Yeah

Okay okay all right so your act-

I think in fact as a matter of fact you may have seen in it one of our Mage gameplay videos there's an example of a skill that's used to kind of drop back from combat right to give that range DPS a little bit more room and while they drop back they expose a wall right that has collision effect on the opponent

Right

When they try to impact and move past that wall

Right

For a period of time

It's not huge it's small but enough to give give space extra space beyond the movement

And it's a very tactical performance on the battlefield

Right to know when to use that skill to you know evade danger or just get that [criss-talk]

Just to break things up give yourself a chance to breathe

Right

7:49

Nice nice now will tank be able to be like in the vanguard shielding his companions behind behind him from attacks you know that don't necessary targeting that that does affect with that shield wall right like that will you know you could technically use that um aerial denial to protect people behind you correct?

Right so walls are going to be to be summoned in the game so to speak and they will they will perform a collision

Right bring up line of sight and line of affect basically

Yeah okay all right excellent uh for um yeah will taking be reserved to the actual tank class that you have or is it possible to build a separate class such as like a mage tank with different tanking attributes either through armor or gear or even maybe a you know a secondary class or subclasses as I was calling it and there are a [garbled]

There's definitely ways to make your class more tanky using our secondary class system if you're going to go down that secondary tank class Avenue but the question I guess is is more pertaining to the role of a tank will a tanky mage be able to compete on the tank scale with a tanky tank

Yeah

Right

And the answer that's going to be no a tanky tank is always going to be the best at tanking

Gotcha

They're good what so that's that's with reservation right like it's going to depend on how the player uses their abilities you know it's if if that tank tank has mastery of what they're doing they'll have the option more options available to them to mitigate damage on themselves and others right then a mage that's heavily focused on their secondary class and putting a lot of tank abilities in now that's assuming to people of the same skill level that all changes based on what the player wants to do and how they're using their tools

Right

Assuming all things being average both in relation to items gear and skill

9:36

Right

Right but yeah I mean one of these other more tanky other classes could perhaps fill role of like an off tank perhaps or something of that nature

For sure there'll be a little bit of a gradient between like being able to take the off tank to the tank like the primary tank role um you know and there certainly will be situations where you know a mage tank probably could tank certain things right

Could suffice depending on what they're encountering

On what the fight is how they're equipped what what they're what they're doing so

Excellent okay you have a lot of stuff summoner lovers in here okay and I know you mentioned a little bit there but in recent times all right and we all know what these modern MMOs that pet classes aren't really pet classes they are characters with a pet that does a little bit of damage on the side and it's a stat stick how much control are summoners going to actually have in relation to what they're actually summoning during battle how interactive will be will be will they be able to control it in some way and how reliant upon the summons is a summoner cuz in World of Warcraft for instance if you're hunter pet dies meh you know whatever

Yeah

Well I mean me personally my idea of the summoner class and what we've we've built so far with it is summoner classes kind of live and breathe through their summon like through their there they're not I don't wanna call it a pet because it's more incumbent to their identity there compared with it on a different plane but the the summoner class is going to have a lot of agency through their summon it's going to have a lot of abilities through the summon you're gonna have a lot of control over that summon when it comes to battle

Right

And and I think that even some of the skills pertain to what abilities the summon itself has through the summoner

Right

Like you'll find the actual summon's creatures abilities on your own hotbar not like its own hotbar

Oh so it takes over? [cross-talk]

You'll be doing things kind of sort of

You're you're you're playing through the summon

It's it's you're the proxy of the summon basically

Right yeah and you enable it to to to perform certain roles and abilities depending on what direction you go with the customizing the summon itself and and yes those as you said you're going to find those summon skills on your hotbar

Right

And that's an extension of your capability in battle and exerting that that control in the in the game

11:56

Right and I believe I heard somewhere that you with with the collaboration of multiple summoners you would be able to summon these larger summons like golems and [cross-talk]

How'd that get out?

Shhh Aggelos Aggelos why did you do this?

Alright guys i'm out that's the end of the interview [laughter]

Why did you do this?

After the show I'm going to get a beating okay so yes you know one of the one of the skills we're looking into is going to be kind of a a a penultimate summoner skill that can see itself in a siege mechanic setting where all summoners of different like races potentially can come together and use an ultimate ability that allows one summoner to take over this like arcane you know golem kind of thing this is giant siege summon that's going to be performing you know certain types of abilities on the battlefield to like either have an AoE presence against other opponents or potentially knock down doors and buildings and all that kind of stuff it's something that we're looking into

Intended to be used during sieges not necessarily a raid

Right

But yeah in very specific contexts this is gonna be something that we are talking about

Yes talking about

The group aspect is something we really appreciate

Yeah well you know sorry chat seems to like it right so that's what I'm seeing right now

We like it [cross-talk]

We like it

Yeah I love it I mean I think that we're not just talking about it

Yeah [cross-talk]

Yeah more likely you'll see it

13:31

Yeah all right well I've seen a comparison to me and Jesus at some point but speaking of that I understand that when your character dies you lose experience however what is the system in place for respawning are returning to life will there be a corpse retrieval function or will you respawn to the nearest node that you were affiliated with?

To clarify you don't really lose experience you gain negative experience and there's a difference there

Yeah

Negative experience has a cumulative effect on your abilities and your perform and stuff like that and it would require you getting rid of that experience debt um you know you're not going to be deleveling in the game

Right

But in regards to respawning and stuff I think that we're going with a standard respawn [cross-talk]

Yeah I don't think we're gonna do corpse retrieval in the way that like it might happen in EQ1 like there's kind of like a cool fun idea about it like it sounds cool but in practice generally it's awful like it's really

Pretty tedious

Yeah

Really tedious

You'll be responding in the world somewhere

Yeah

14:31

Right okay all right no that's cool you showed off the predator which is the what rogue ranger class stealth in uh in various videos all of which are gorgeous by the way um but a lot of questions we had especially this early and I know there's probably it's very early and there'll be tweaking with this but how long is it intended to last and is there a radius around the player that they're invisible with until you know enemy player or spawn enters that radius or is it just that semi-transparent shimmer?

I made a statement last night on the discord in regards to I think there was a conversation being had about you know what people can glean from seeing effects and stuff in our pre-alpha footage and I just want to make sure that people are where these skills in effects sometimes we play with the limitations cooldowns and all that kind of stuff it's not representative of actual skills

Right right

That are going to appear and how long they're going to last in the game so we don't envision a rogue being able to stay invisible forever

Right

Right

Right yeah

And there is going to be somewhat of a shimmer effect when it comes to visually giving a clue and a location of where something is

Yeah and it's it's also like if you think about like when we talk about utility abilities

Right

Um there are certain people who are going to be able to detect them from farther away

Arcane eye yeah

And I that kind of stuff there'll be abilities that allow you to kind of like seek out or will function kind of like as an anti stealth

Yeah

So

For example like you know the Summoner may have an arcane eye ability right has better stealth detection the cleric may have a spotlight

The ranger has his scouting abilities

Exactly

16:00

Yeah gotcha yeah absolutely so um I'm gonna go ahead and move on to our next subsection for guilds because I run a big guild you know Steven you ran a big guild [laughter] and there's a lot of people in the early community that trying to you know prepare their guild so you mentioned before that guilds will need to be like leveled up and there will be progression and if there'll be upgrades that you can do to increase your roster size but when a guild's created how many members can join when it's like fresh off the bat I mean as much as you know right off?

So that that's a good question and we don't have a an absolute answer for you right now and because we don't have that absolute answer I don't want to speculate on what the number is going to be

Yeah

I would just say that we're we're cognizant of two things one we're cognizant of the fact that Zergs never make for fun gameplay

Right

And we want to make sure that our guild system doesn't encourage zerging and so because of that fact we have some limitations in regards to guild size and in leveling up the guild and respects to that now on the other side of that coin we are very cognizant of the fact that people who are friends and have been a part of large guilds want to be a part of that structure and be at that in the beginning of the game so we have mechanisms for people to play together when groupings and raids and get involved in the guild early on and we're going to make it meaningful for both small guilds to contend with the larger guilds when it comes to content and their role in the world

Right

And if you're a guild like a preset guilt that wants to earn the higher cap I'm sure that I mean there's definitely an avenue for you to get that quickly if you want to [cross-talk]

Oh for sure right fairly quickly

Okay okay great

And and to be to be clear as well we're not exactly sure whether or not that cap will will be bound behind a progression path it might be

Right

You know but I don't know if it's gonna be intrinsically tied to a leveling you may be able to start with your max capacity

Right

In the guild we haven't decide for sure yet

It's kind of how we find balance in the early stages [cross-talk]

Yes and it's gonna involve testing too

Yeah

Yeah

Yeah and

Just what feels right

18:04

Yeah and I knew this very early but you know with a lot of these communities already rallying behind Ashes of Creation these are things that when they're brought up are now floating around people's heads

Yeah absolutely

Yes

I will say this that that in addition to our focus on an individual's role within the world we also are going to have and this is going to be a bold statement cotton

Oh god I'm gonna hold on in my seat

In my opinion we're going to have the most in-depth guild system of any MMORPG I've ever experienced and it is going to be something that will be very fluid for leaders to come in and organize a community and get it up and running quick

Oh that was wasn't bad

That wasn't that bad

It's a bulb I say we're gonna have the most [cross-talk]

No absolutely that's a bold statement but I don't doubt it uh I mean part of it is that Steven is Steven and Steven have certain goals and he's been somewhere in these games and

What does that mean Steven is Steven?

It means you love running giant guilds [cross-talk]

The A-Team do de de do I like it

But it's something that that that is constantly talked about over here is making sure the guild experience is a good one in order to make good you need to be able to organize you need to be able to feel like the guild is more than just a chat room and so so that's that's a big focus

19:22

Right so what functions will guild leaders have to facilitate guild cohesion in mustering of forces in reaction to the game world events such as bosses PvP caravans is there gonna be something like a rallying call for guildies so to speak so that if something's going on or as a guild leader you're like hey this is happening and I want at least attention brought to my guildies this is what we're kind of focusing on outside of chat obviously will there be those settings?

So I think we need to define what guild cohesion is and drawing attention to because [laughter] because in previous games I've played one of the biggest issues with with how it can become a zerg fest is the ability for guilds to instantly rally and port to anywhere in the map and that presents itself as a problem in my opinion because at that point it just becomes an issue of who can rally faster [cross-talk]

Who has more numbers

And who has more numbers right exactly and I think there should be an element of intelligence gathering an element of strategy and there should be some traversal required in order for that guild to to congrue so on the first point of guild cohesion I think that comes down to to user interface in regards to what functionality is available for guild leaders and/or officers who are appointed in order to reach out to members who are either online or offline

Yep

And I think a portion of that interface for our system is going to come into play when we're talking about integration of a certain software that we've been discussing

Right

And whether or not that's going to have application outside of in client right and there's a potential for that and then in addition while in client if a guild leader wants to open a user interface window potentially with a guild member that's like attention you know like a server message [cross-talk]

Yeah it basically would be like a server message but on behalf of a guild

Exactly to your guild only

Right it's all about figuring out the best way to present that information to the player right but we definitely want to present that information

Yeah it's a big portion of the guild play is having a very functional UI for guild leaders to utilize when it comes to you know communicating in-client with their members

Make sure they have the tools that they need to keep that organization [cross-talk]

And that includes like you know board messages and you know reminders of the day and calendar

Message of the day

And a calendar exactly yeah

21:44

well I was thinking something more along the lines of like the beacons of Gondor or something you know you see them lit oh let's go [cross-talk]

The problem is you've got a hundred guilds and they all had beacons you I mean [cross-talk]

Everybody would be blind [cross-talk]

Yeah exactly it would be on fire

There you go it's self-defeating [laughter]

Ashes this is how the world ended up destroyed [cross-talk] initially all the guilds lit all the fires and the world just blew up

Nice I like it

Nice

New meaning [cross-talk]

You'll have to go rewrite the lore

22:10

How will the guild advancement be determined and will there be forms of like passive buffs or active abilities that can be used by guild leaders and members?

I'm stealing your water

No seal steal my water I don't care

So advancement is going to relate to a few things we want guilds to to participate in the development of the world so in order for guilds to advance they're going to have to show some accomplishment in regards to that development as well and those accomplishments can be tied behind questing certain quest events they can be tied behind the crafting of certain types of items

They could be tied to participating in certain types of events

Yeah I think there's there's going to be an in-depth structure in regards to the advancement of a guild

And being active in the world

And being active in the world exactly yeah

Okay so how large are dungeons going to be in this game can we expect these small little point-a to point-b affairs or will we have these sprawling networks of you know caverns and rooms of multiple accents but when or access points from the service or even from the underrealm since we unlocked that

Ooh underrealm now I think I think we're our intent in regards to dungeons and just adventuring oh my god

That's one my favorites

I like it too is that it's gonna be massive I mean our world is massive

Yeah

Yeah it we are going to have a big focus on big things yes but that doesn't mean like we do want like a scale of of content for people to participate in right sometimes people log in and they only have 30 minutes to play and we want we want we want places where people can do that and kind of experience like hey that was a really fun little session now gotta log off so there will be larger commitments and smaller commitments throughout the whole the whole world

Yeah that's a good point

Yeah but we do we do have a big strong focus on these set pieces

For sure absolutely yeah you're going to see massive caverns massive dungeons in the world and I think that those are going to be popular spots in the open world for people to contend with over you know who's present there and stuff like that

Right

24:17

Speaking of overworld we'll dungeons be subject to the same open world PvP?

There definitely will be some dungeons because they're open world dungeons that are going to probably be prime locations in regards to certain features and/or items and drop tables yes

And/or open PvP zones

And/or open PvP zones yeah I think one of the interesting components of Ashes of Creation and our flagging system is that it it presents the potential for two conflicting parties to to have open conflict in the open world over pretty much anything that they may want or disagree with and if that pertains to a hunting ground not just the caravan or the castles or the nodes or whatever it can exist in that area where people are going to be contending to have you know participation in that area basically

Right

Right

Right so you know that kind of leads in with these open worlds how are you going to make the PvE experience and yes there's a cattail right under my shoulder how are you going to make it so that raid and dungeon bosses can be done with their mechanics in place without Zerg fests happening to just ignore everything?

So the interesting thing about when we're designing encounters like that that involve these these raid bosses and dungeon bosses is that there are specific mechanics that will be necessary for the players to learn and react to from both a skill standpoint and a knowledge standpoint that are going to be required to complete the boss and cannot be zerged through and you know you could bring a large dessert as you want if they're not aware of certain mechanics or if they do not react to them appropriately you know they're going to get wiped so we want to make sure that our content has meaning in the sense of exploration and discovery for for exactly what this boss is all about what type of skills this boss has and and how that relates to our raid composition and our tactics and strategy in that fight and it's not just going to be something that let's rally everyone possible and just zerg it down you know like that's that's not experiencing content that's just you know bulldozing to it

Right right

26:33

Right okay I'm gonna move along to some freehold stuff cuz I know a lot of people have questions about freeholds so when you own a freehold ok is there going to be a type of like a robust ban friend or co-owner mechanic for homesteads in addition to being able to lock your door and bar entry in a PvP situation outside of you know sieges when everything could just be burnt to the ground?

Yes you will be able to lock your door

Oh good

And yes you will be able to put a an access list to it and as far as co-owner goes it's always a little bit rough so in the games that I've worked on before co-ownership can turn into a pretty big mess when it turns out to like hey you've put an item down I've put an item down who owns that item when we pack up the house move or

That's why we have our divorce court

There we go we have our divorce court ah confirmed

Part of the social systems that you didn't know about

You get half of a table

So co-ownership is something that I would like to do but we need to do a little bit more work on our back-end to make sure that that works the way that we want it to and that ownership transfers in the way that players would expect it to so so that's something we're still working on but something that we're planning on having

I think potentially in addition to that from the perspective of potentially access like what's the difference between co-ownership and access I think we intend to have access like you said oh yeah and that in and of itself can kind of mimic co-ownership

Right

Right

But we're still maintaining a solitary owner

Gotcha now what was gonna happen to this freehold should a node that it's connected to either delevel are be completely destroyed will it just fall apart and degrade or will it still be usable just outside the protection of the node that it was connected to?

Those poor poor citizens

Now okay so to be to be clear you know in Ashes of Creation oh I think we might be getting we might be getting some gameplay footage

Ah

Oh should me on the screen okay are we going to be getting it soon do we have it?

Yeah

Oh do you want to show it now?

We can show when you're ready

We can show while we're talking as soon as you spool it up we're ready to go okay so Ashes of Creation oh my gosh

The ice cream truck is here and it's waiting for Steven

28:50

It always pulls in front of the [cross-talk]

Just exactly for us

And I always buy ice cream for the office

Yeah he does

I'm sorry guys came at the wrong time

I'm sad now

Anyways so in regards to to to how freeholds react to sieges so in Ashes of Creation change is a constant mechanic you know it's something that players need to be cognizant of like when defending the oh and we have our gameplay footage by the way again this is a pre-alpha footage so take with a grain of salt it's not very polished at the moment but it is a beautiful thing that we've spent a long time over the past 15 months creating and we love it so far so this is a mage running through one of the great divine gateways in the world in the Aela starting area so sorry getting back to your question

Yes

29:34

When a when a siege is is declared against a node and if that siege is successful you're going to see the zone that pertains to that node after the successful siege will go through a period of open combat where these freeholds are susceptible to destruction and attack and after that period is complete which it may it could last you know an hour or two hours we haven't determined that yet but after it is complete if your freehold still resides within a stage three node or above's zone of influence it will be fine if it does not then it will be gone

Okay so even if the city goes down you actually can defend you can be out there with a pitchfork defending against you know

Absolutely

Alright [cross-talk]

And there's going to be structures that you can build on your freehold that could assist with that there could even be guards that you could retain through some type of mechanic or purchase or bolting whatever it is that can be at your freehold in the event that a siege is successful and help defend and you can have your friends come and help defend your guild can come and help and uh you know it is a it is another point and there [cross-talk]

It is the last stand basically

Yeah and those people that attack that node you know they may be this you know roving band of marauders going through the countryside trying to destroy the freeholds that existed here and and they may see yours with a bunch of your friends defending and they say okay you know forget that one we're go to the next one [laughter] whatever the deal may be but yeah that's how that's gonna work and it's another thing important to note that you know the way housing has worked in other games is it is a lot of resources and a lot of time to build up that housing but ours is is more cognizant of the fact that housing is going to change it's gonna move its go you know

It's probably going to get destroyed

Probably gonna get destroyed so it's not going to be as intensive to get it up and running again

It's not gonna be onerous you'll be able to copy your layout you'll be able to you know

Save your build right

And and stuff like that so it's not going to be you know the end of the world if your your homestead right or your freehold gets

And and one of the other things that we're going to test an alpha and beta which is a potential is that you know these these certificates of freehold may have on them additional design features like you know you built a furnace or you build a smelter you built a home whatever the deal is and that may get included on to your certificate and if it gets destroyed and you've already built up those places on the certificate before and you go to lay it down somewhere else it'll come pre-built or something along those lines

Right

Yeah it's something [cross-talk]

We can more likely do something

32:14

Yeah

Okay now you mentioned that these freeholds like you said with these writs of freehold the plots of land that you can build anything you want on um you know in place now how are these gonna be set up are we gonna see something like every free patch of earth taken up by these freeholds or is it something closer to some other games where there's designated housing zones that that's where they can be built?

So that's a good question you know obviously assets within the world carry with them a template that that exists there their location basically and there's going to be passing routes and there's going to be you know dungeons and events spawn areas and all that kind of stuff that are going to have kind of block out areas but essentially I don't think we're going to go down the route of hey there's a designated plot over here that everybody gets to rush to and grab it's going to be more open within the zone of influence around a node but there's also going to be proximity markers between freeholds so that you can't stack them necessarily on top of each other and just kind of make this ugly looking countryside thing

Right we want stuff to look good

Yeah we and we want there to be some space between you and your neighbors a little bit

Right

So you know it's going to be a more open plot placement design but maintaining that proximity distance between the templates [cross-talk]

And you are gonna need a leveled up node in order to place one to begin with so it's not going to be just everywhere

Yeah it's not going to be land rush either

Yeah it'll it'll make sense with regard to what the world looks like kind of so you'll see civilization with civilization

Yes

33:43

Okay and that actually does follow up here pretty nicely with going into nodes section again cuz I know we go over nodes a lot but I had some pretty focused questions here

Of course

And you kind of answered that at least with the player housing side but when these nodes level up and who decides the location of these buildings specifically within the cities themselves are they pre pre done by like NPCs and stuff like that but then you also mentioned player run governments and having the ability to choose specific services like how how are these things being placed are we just gonna see willy-nilly cities or did you hire a city planner?

No so

We hired a city planner

Excellent!

You're going to see that when nodes develop they're going to have a base style template that's reflective of a few things it's going to be reflective of the the race that is the primary founders of the node and that's going to determine like the architecture design and the types of buildings are going to see it's going to be determined by the type of node whether it's a military divine economic or what

Scientific

Scientific sorry and and those types of factors are going to come into the way that the node is going to appear initially the player run government is going to have sectored doubt zones within the node that are unbuilt and are going to require direction from the mayor and the government to determine what do we build here is it going to be an apartment complex is it going to be a merchant house is it going to be a thieves guild is it going to be a marketplace is it going to be a barracks there's a whole bunch of of determining factors of what types of buildings are going to get constructed and then once that is determined the community is going to have to come together through driving resources through caravans and bringing them into the node and constructing actually constructing that building through questing and stuff like that

Excellent

Right so it's a little bit of A and a little bit of B

Okay

Like there's going to be a lot of stuff provided out out of the box and then there'll be decisions that the government has to make as far as how to kind of specialize their city and once they choose certain things they won't be able to choose other things so there's going to be you know we expect there to be node builds basically

And there could be regime change

Yeah

If somebody doesn't like the fact that a market was built and they want to re-elect a new government next cycle they can do so in that and that market could be destroyed and a new building take its place so there's gonna be actions [cross-talk]

Right the will of the people

Exactly I get a mandate

36:05

Right [laughter] all right so leads me into another fun question will these cities that are being developed by node progression have predetermined names are we gonna see some stupid player-created name like City McCityFace

We talked about this

Number one my name is not stupid [laughter]

City McCityFace is a great name

Confirmed! [cross-talk]

It's going to be predetermined there there may be a list of names available for the city that could be initially determined by the creators right the primary people they could choose from a list but it's not going to be City McCityFace

No City McCityFace alright you're heard it here folks

True sadness

I know [cross-talk] I'm sorry all you memeers

You see I really like that just because you know for the lore of the world it's kind of nice to know these cities actually are you know we're predetermined so you know it when your franchise expands and someone writes about City A you kind of have a logical idea of where it's at so we'll be Sur will each individual server have like a unique landmass or is the world the same regardless and the only thing that really changes is how the node is developed?

37:12

Yes though the world is the same regardless and all that will change is how the nodes developed uh and and that should change enough I think um but uh having having everything uh procedural like that just it's it's it doesn't work out that well usually it ends up feeling really generic and soulless and we want to make sure that our environments feel crafted and that there's a reason for everything being there not just you know algorithm A decided this might look good so so yeah everything is going to be crafted everything's going to be the same but the stories and the cities and those things are all what's going to change

Excellent

So with the enhanced naval combat and content that you guys are doing alright so I have some questions here um a can ships be destroyed by either enemy players or monsters?

Yes

Okay will I be able to siege a coastal city by sea?

Maybe it's possible

Right it's potentially possible

It's like a balance thing

Yeah um it's something that we're still talking about now that we know that we're actually going to be doing it right um we're gonna be fleshing these these ideas out a lot further it's something that we talked about we thought would be really really cool but again we have to really kind of game it out and make sure that it will be cool

And there has to be a give-and-take there's as well meaning like you know founding a city along the coastline shouldn't inherently be more risky for the city to besiege

Right

So we're gonna have to make sure that that those mechanics blend well with each other and balance out

Right

Oh I mean yeah there you go so underwater environments how are they gonna work how our players gonna actually be able to breathe cuz given like we don't really know much about the technology of the world here so how is it going to be you know potions spells like it are we gonna be able to breathe underwater at all or is it hold your breath and you got 30 seconds to figure out your way around?

I think that there that we're going to include a few different mechanics there could potentially be items that may give you a magical ability to breathe underwater there could be potions there could be food there could be

Gillyweed

Spells yeah Gillyweed there we go [laughter] I told you Gillyweed uh no there definitely could be a wide range of abilities to make because now we have that expansion where we're going to be including a lot of content underwater we want to make sure that it's it's it's not going to be

It's accessible

Right

Right [cross-talk]

Yeah it's not nice to make content that people can't play

39:36

And we don't want it to be uh you know something that's cumbersome

Right

To navigate the stuff I think that's probably been the downside of a lot of other games that I've introduced underwater content is the fact that players don't want to go there because it's a pain in the butt to go there

Yeah it always feels like throwaway content almost and it's it's something that we really want to focus on make feel good

All right so this one is completely directed at Jeffrey over here Jeffrey bar God will the bard class feature some of the some like Star Wars Galaxies-esque non-combat roles where they can be used out of combat to restore players you know into arrested status or if this goes for any class but since bard is a bard [laughter]

Like maybe they could dance for the people

Maybe I mean if that's their thing you did mention before they don't have to play instruments they could dance

If they're gonna entertain

Entertain write poetry I don't know whatever

Um so probably not in that way we want to really focus the social spaces on that um so it'll be more like where the area is and and like who's taking part in that we want we want those social spaces to kind of take that role not necessarily a class we don't want that class to be the downtime guy we want the area to be the downtime guy so there will be you know bards will have utility just like all classes will have utility out of combat but but rested experience specifically is probably not going to be that role

Gotcha now we can see from the video grab here you have some combat and you are playing a mage so it kind of fits in it almost looks like a lot of spells are instant but are there going to be any spells that require you to remain you know stationary while they are being casted and give you know will players have the ability to interrupt the spell caster?

41:22

Um there will be very few that will lock you in place that's not how we want our combat to roll I think it's I think most people think it's pretty boring to stand in place and cast the same spell over and over again [cross-talk]

It is boring yeah

But there are going to be a need for that right the Summoner when they're summoning their creature more than likely isn't going to be running around there will be other so there will be other abilities that are kind of bigger that make you a bigger target by rooting you

Yeah again it's a give-and-take

But it's a give-and-take right and we don't want the moment-to-moment to be standing there but there may be some times where you won't be able to move

But generally as a rule of thumb when it comes to combat even for any class is going to involve a situational awareness and and and movement and positioning

Right

Right and you know that that comes into play when you're talking about instant casts or cast times that require no movement or that kind of stuff

Right

If there isn't a skill like that there's a reason for it and it's a give-and-take relationship

Right it's it's we want you to take take the time to make sure a like I'm actually in a good place where I can cast the spell and it's really powerful but I can't use it that often because people can get me while I'm in it so so it's going to depend on the ability itself there's not going to be a crazy ton of them though

Okay

And then also with regard to interrupts there will be interrupts you'll see that even though she's moving around she does have a cast bar there and while that casts bar is going off there will be the chance to interrupt and we've got we've got the ability to counter that interrupt and we've got interrupts our abilities that can interrupt better than other abilities so

42:53

Right now I went through pretty much every Q&A that you guys have done in preparation for this and you're probably hate me for this because you made a comment at one point okay a long time ago in a land far far away that the spellbook can only hold so many spells do you intend to limit the number of spells that player can actually learn or is it just at you know an allusion to the number abilities that you can actually have on your bar at a time?

Who said that?

Who said that?

Was that me?

Where was that said?

Ahh I believe it was actually Jeffrey to be honest it snows

Oh what did I do?

What a gotcha moment

No no that's [laughter]

How many times must I tell you?

I will go back and get a timestamp of when it happened so

Um I I don't know why I said that that's that's not a thing that's going [cross-talk]

It was probably figurative

It might have been figurative

Probably in relation to the amount of skills that are going in your bar

Right

Okay

Right not you're not going to have a hundred spells for somebody you know spellbook can only hold too many spells probably figuratively speaking like we don't want you to be encumbered with 50 spells to choose from

Right

Especially spells that we use back when your level 10 you never touch again

You're learning spells yeah

And you're using a certain amount of them so in a way right [cross-talk]

So it yeah definitely more regards to the hotbar there's not a spell book there's no memorization

44:13

All right that's very cool now again Jeffrey i'm calling you out here cuz you said you touched on unique and legendary items [cross-talk] that are gonna be very hard to find okay some perhaps taking years now here's the fun part will there be lore in Ashes of Creation to be a backstory history for these things and will it feature clues to finding these hidden artifacts like pieces to a puzzle that can be made more complete as more and more players uncover the different lore you know #meaningful lore?

Right now totally like that's that's absolutely intention of these things we want it like when you discover one of these items we want it to make sense to you right we want it to be like oh I get it now like this whole story now makes sense

And it's like hey this item was discovered on that server and it's a piece of a broader puzzle

Right and they're gonna go like wait what story are you talking about we experience something totally different we're gonna have to go check that out so yeah absolutely that's that's that's totally the intention of that system

Gotcha alright so PvP related stuff the word battleground has been thrown around quite a few times on the live stream by everybody so citing everyone but in this post World of Warcraft era the term battleground has become very specific as an instanced PvP zones now how if this is true how are your battlegrounds as you said going to function and how do they relate to what you've already said with the arena the arena system and how are you going to link it and make it meaningful to the rest of the world?

Well just to be a quick clarification in regards to our terminology when using the term battleground is because we're instituting at least for me because we're instituting a flagging system that allows for PvP to erupt anywhere I consider battlegrounds kind of interchangeable with a zone that exists within the open world that does not include our flagging mechanics but instead flags everyone for battle so it's a battleground it's open PvP and that includes the caravan system it includes castle sieges and node sieges and you know objective-based Guild Wars and stuff like that but in addition to that we have arena systems so

I know and that's what I want a clarification because when people hear battleground they think of 10v10s or whatever the case may be you already mentioned arenas

Yeah

Or scenarios

Right yeah so again a battlegrounds is just is just a way for me to refer to open-world systems that relate to everyone being involved in a PvP situation and specific to that occurrence

Gotcha so when seating a node what is the win mechanic for each side?

You got this right just say know Aggelos if you want to retake that question back here you have two more questions so you can you choose wisely

Darn

Out of your out of your 150 questions remaining

Right

Out of the 2,000 questions remaining

You have two more

Yeah I know I seriously I'm actually thinking more as we're going so um

Oh great okay no we're gonna stick with that out what is the win condition for sieges for each side?

The win condition for sieges

Yep

Okay wow so we're we will release more on that [cross-talk] yeah I know we're going to release more on that in the future through a blog because our our sieging mechanics are very in-depth and they're

There's are a lot of phases to it

A lot of phases yeah and we want to make sure that I don't give you a one-minute answer and then people get lost with a thousand questions

Alright

So I would probably reserve that one for a blog post that's going to come in the future

Okay so does that mean I get my two questions?

There will be a thing you have to [cross-talk]

There there will be a thing

A flag [cross-talk] like

Progressive objectives or conditions [cross-talk]

Okay so just just to get it a little bit there's going to be objectives for the attackers and that's going to revolve around a central point that exists either within a castle or within a city node there's also going to be objectives or quadrants that the attackers can can capture during the siege that's going to harm the defenders respawn and ability to defend and it's going to give advancements to the attackers and where they can where they can spawn at inside the castle and/or in the siege and stuff like that and then it's also going to decrease their casting time when it comes to actually pulling the flag down and stuff like that so there's there's mechanics for then the defenders to assault the outpost of the attackers and where they're coming from and stuff like that to kind of disable them in certain regards and is also going to be a time-frame that they will need to hold out the defense of a central point either within a note or in a castle

Okay

As a quick overall gist but there's a lot of very specific mechanics that relate to both castle sieges and node sieges

48:49

Alright so final questions since you know I haven't touched any all right so um question events once a note is destroyed or reset for instance does that open the path up for another node to develop for example say you have two nodes developed close to one another on say off the sides of a valley and if one

Tale of two cities

Yeah there you go Tale of Two Cities one node becomes dominant takes over the other node and opens a dungeon and mounts behind it blah blah blah and and it locks access to a dungeon that might have been on the other side that node is destroyed resets can people then go to the other side and unlock those stories?

They can then begin to try and progress that second city that got stunted in its growth and discover all of the storylines mechanics and quests and dungeons and events that are tied to that node that never came to fruition because its sister city progressed further

Gotcha well I've been I've been put on the blocker now so

Thanks Aggelos [laughter]

Thank you Aggelos we appreciated it we'll probably have you on again in the future I think you're a great Q&A facilitator or moderator or whatever it is and

Question asker

Question asker and uh we think the Dungeon Crawler Network is a cool crew

Yeah it's fun watching you guys

Yeah awesome thank you so much appreciate it

50:05

Absolutely take care buddy

See ya

Do we have a few questions we can get to from the forums?

We do

We do?

We do?

Oh very cool I don't know do we? Yes okay

I just wasn't sure if they're being thrown up there?

Oh I don't know okay ask your phone that's fine oh by the way um hmm I hope everybody enjoyed the gameplay stuff that we put up there [cross-talk] we're going to have some more next week as well

Yeah

Maybe a little hunting maybe a little bit of hunting gathering some meat to eating that meat

Possibly we'll see

Okay so the first question we have is from Prophet will we be able to customize the ships?

Yeah I believe so I think it's going to be a component of shipbuilding and ship classes is going to have some customization in regards to you know their speed and their ability to take damage and deal damage

And aesthetically of course

Right aesthetically absolutely

By WeeRobert will there be NPCs on our freeholds?

Yes

Yeah I think that way yeah absolutely

Well it's possible right like it's up to you but yeah

Right that's true

Yeah that's true you can choose to hire people or not

Yeah

51:17

By Crymoar how will guilds how will guild holds interact with the village city of Metropolis nodes if so how? oh so I guess maybe they were referring to like guild halls

Guild halls [garbled] and so guild halls are going to unlock certain actions that a guild can perform within a city it's going to unlock a different relationship with that node that guilds are going to have access to specific benefits from the node itself it's going to allow a guild to participate if we reach our three million dollar goal participate in the shareholder system there's a lot of different things than it does

Next one by scionofdoom great name will there be multiple religions in Ashes and will there be incentives or some mechanic to a quote meaningful conflict between these religions for PvP?

Oh no [laughter]

Right I think the answer there is actually partly in the question when you mention incentives like by giving people incentives to do things there's naturally going to be conflict for certain things but we're never from the beginning trying to pit people against eachother inherently right so we're just giving you the option to choose and do and more as you said [cross-talk]

By giving incentives naturally that's going to erupt in certain conflict

Right

You know we don't want there to be well right I'm not gonna say or don't want there to be but regardless of the fact there is progression paths in certain religions there are multiple religions available within the game because there are several deities with the game

And they offer different things

And they offer different things and it's up to you to determine what things you want to have and that could put pit you against other people

Mm-hmm next question by Marik will leveling experience be primarily attained through quests monster kills or an an intended combination of PvE / PvP objectives?

I think it's a blend

All of the above yeah [cross-talk]

It's a blend of everything [cross-talk]

In addition to crafting in addition to exploration in addition to there's a lot of stuff

There's everything yeah

I think that's why a lot of our focus is on contribution kind of like how you're contributing to the world

53:13

Daythor what happens to a freehold oh wait sorry dathor he's asking a question or she is asking a question about the freehold corresponding node destroyed but we answered that [cross-talk] Lazy giant will players be able to have multiple freeholds in different nodes

No

No you may own one of each type of housing that's one freehold one static note home one instanced apartment home but you may only ever declare citizenship for one note

Right

Alottle will the area music change depending on the node's level and under attack? so basically a condition [cross-talk]

Oh yeah

We absolutely yeah

100 percent

For sure intent

When a battle gets declared you're gonna have some heavy percussions and things going

Yeah we want to focus on the music a lot we understand it's really important and it's gotten a short shrift in previous titles but

Yes

Crivvle will you be able to store your items within your freehold?

Yes

Yes that's one of the one of the big parts of it

Yeah one of most attractive aspects of a freehold is that you have storage space there

54:11

So [cross-talk] Gothics will a guild be able to declare a war to another guild?

Yes

That's good [laughter]

Well guys we hope you guys enjoyed the live cast today we'll be back with you on Monday at 3 p.m. Pacific time again from everybody here at Intrepid Studios we cannot express to you enough our thanks it's very exciting to see the progress that we're making on our Kickstarter becoming the number one funded Kickstarter MMORPG very soon

Very soon right around the corner

We'll make an announcement

Come on guys let's make this happen!

Were excited get out there and share this project as you have been doing with all of your friends [cross-talk]

You guys have been absolutely incredible

We love it and we will see you guys on Monday

Thanks so much you guys

Thank you and have a great weekend