Talk:2021-05-28 Livestream

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Raw transcript

• 0:04

[Music]

• 0:20

hello everyone and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation made development update and with me

• 0:27

today is a little bit of a mix-up of course we always have with us steven sharif our creative director how

• 0:33

you doing today stephen i am very tired no i'm with you

• 0:38

i'm really tired you want to talk about who's tired yesterday was a long testing day i got up at 3 30 in the

• 0:45

morning and didn't get to bed until 1am so it was it was a rough day but

• 0:51

i'm doing great very excited uh loved the the testing we did yesterday had a lot of fun

• 0:56

can't wait to show the stream some of the videos um one person was so quick to put up a

• 1:02

video like of talking about their experience it was like within a i was just in shock oh yeah it's amazing to see how

• 1:09

many of you are enjoying it and having fun and obviously we know there are issues and stuff like that it's an alpha

• 1:16

it's going to be um and of course with us we have somebody new which some of you may know if you're

• 1:21

part of if you're a long-term member of our community but if you are somebody who's new and uh you haven't ever

• 1:27

checked out any of our previous streams this is kevin mcpherson and kevin if you want to talk about kind of what you do

• 1:33

at Intrepid Studios and give people a little intro of you sure um

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i'm lead uh gameplay programmer so my job is to sort of spec out

• 1:45

different tasks on the way to the milestones that we want to hit and then work with production to

• 1:52

schedule those out and get all the engineers on the gameplay side working on those tasks to

• 1:59

get to the target um i would say my job's pretty pretty great because i have an incredibly good

• 2:06

engineering team uh backing me up as well as mark storch and

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the platform services team and uh and ash thoth who's

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kept all of our builds and everything working absolutely if you guys ever saw the

• 2:23

wizard of oz that scene where they actually get into the wizard of oz room and there's like a curtain there and like the dude who's

• 2:30

actually the wizard doing all the magic behind the scenes that's kevin and the engineers who are

• 2:35

actually making everything work and happen and just performing code magic it is seriously

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magic um i adore all of you and you we adore us too

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[Laughter] i saw in chat somebody said the unsung heroes that's very true you know a lot

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of times the artists and the designers you know they have the ideas of the systems and

• 3:00

they have the cool models but really it's the engineers who are the glue that keeps everything actually

• 3:06

together and working the way it's intended to yeah so big go yeah go on yeah he's like please

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um enjoy what we do and of course today we have a whole slew

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this is actually going to be a very long live stream it might end up being a two hour one so i apologize in advance

• 3:27

of course if you're watching this on youtube i always give you time stamps in the description so if you didn't know that i do that for

• 3:34

every single one because i know some people want to go straight to a specific topic or you want to relive it or whatever it may be

• 3:41

so yeah just letting you all know that so today we will be doing quick reminders as per usual we'll do a

• 3:48

studio update from stephen and of course today our design section is also going to incorporate some

• 3:53

engineering goodness and i have a little bonus love letter from our qa team uh to all of our alpha 1 testers so

• 4:02

that will be really adorable and we have an environment and character update as per usual amazingly good stuff coming

• 4:09

out of that and then we'll do our q a with you all so thank you for submitting your

• 4:14

questions over on the forums we super duper appreciate it um so should i get right into all of the

• 4:21

things and for the people asking about my pc it's dead it can't be healthy oh oh last night we

• 4:27

were doing some late night testing and we were literally on the precipice of recording the video we're

• 4:33

going to show you here in a moment and of course as usual some stream gremlin works its way into the plans

• 4:40

i mean the the previous stream we had to retake four times because i could not get

• 4:46

recording happening on my computer being a black screen in four times we had to retake the video

• 4:51

we showed you guys with the was that the dragon was that the last yeah that was the last one oh my god

• 4:57

wow it feels like that was years ago i know um it's been a long month but then last night margaret just like

• 5:03

all i hear is user has disconnected from your channel i'm like huh wonder what happened i think i said before i was like i think

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my pc is dying yes that's true and then i was like really you think so and then you didn't respond then i just heard the user

• 5:15

disconnected and then i saw slack where you're just like yeah my computer's dead yeah my 30 90 overheated

• 5:20

my pc it was a cooling issue so i'm up we're gonna we're gonna fix it but our

• 5:26

lovely it guy zim he's amazing he brought me a pc at 11 p.m drove out at 11 00 p.m i've just been

• 5:33

setting up this you know all my pc and the stream but it's good and then and then you like a champ had to work through the entire

• 5:39

night just to reset up all the streaming stuff that's crazy i couldn't even imagine after the whole

• 5:44

day of testing and working that's yeah i started at 6am so we're gonna have to make sure monday when we when we do some gaming

• 5:51

for the holiday that uh we get you a nice little drink and some good food yeah mcp should give me some magic items

• 5:59

for my pathfinder character wow [Laughter]

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it just has pain and suffering oh that's true all right well let's get into it you all don't want to hear about our pathfinder campaign

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um so first and foremost oh you know what i forgot to set up i actually forgot to set up that one

• 6:22

scene the reminder scene so i'm just going to read them off to you i'm i'm sorry about this well first

• 6:27

and foremost we do have the web update if you didn't notice we took down the web we actually thought we were going to take seven hours we only took

- Reminders

• 6:33

three so can all things happen like that that'd be great um

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but if you didn't know we did provide stripe as a default purchase option i know that that was

• 6:44

something that everyone was very concerned about if you do still want to use zola it is still available

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to you there as well um but if we do see that not a lot of people are utilizing it we may uh you know adjust things around

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so we're always watching the data as it comes in absolutely and just to jump on that fact you know this was a big

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request from the community and obviously you know our motto here is to to take in the feedback that's necessary

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and let that effectuate change um so we're happy that we're able to provide this because of the

• 7:15

out the uh outpouring requests from the community yeah and we know people have been asking for it so um

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next we do have our monthly cosmetic swap over for the brine and bounties and that is

• 7:27

scheduled for june 9th 2021 at 11am pacific we always put that in our article we let you know

• 7:32

whenever the swapover is happening so keep an eye on those things as we announce them you always know a month in

• 7:37

advance and then they will swap over within this one we also have our faq

• 7:43

in regards to alpha 1 pre-order packages and how that works so please please read that i know that

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some people have asked a lot of those questions and we usually keep it updated and if any new ones come in we make sure that we let folks know and

• 7:57

then of course we have if you have any further questions you can message us on our support twitter uh which is just you know asc support

• 8:04

and uh we'll we'll answer all of your questions um and with you know every month we always

• 8:11

have a new dev update and dev discussion so uh last month we asked you or you know this

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last month we asked you what are some examples of crafting systems and mechanics you've enjoyed

• 8:22

from other games and why what percentage of your time do you typically find yourself engaged in crafting activities

• 8:29

in an mmo and we'll be compiling that feedback for our lovely development team we always send them over all of the

• 8:35

goodies and toast does an amazing job mad love to toast um and we will have a

• 8:41

new june 1 coming up uh in in regards to environments so if you

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just want to jump on your piggy back there yeah with a toast what a champ i mean toast throughout the testing

• 8:54

unbelievable both you and toast um but just a absolutely amazing job

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um keeping the community informed and and relaying messages and information to us 100

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yeah i i don't i don't know what i would do without toast so

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i love i love toasters i love it oh um but i was saying that it would be

• 9:20

funny if we grab all of the commute like was obviously we're looking for a junior community manager you know if you're interested

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apply um but i was like what if we have all of our cms be some form of bread

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like what if we convince them all or breakfast food oh breakfast food yeah oh but anyways

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you know if you find a good community manager y'all never let them go keep them forever

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and of course further discussing more things that the lovely toast does we have our guild gatherings

• 9:53

which last month or this month we asked you what kinds of activities do you like to participate in

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with your guild outside of the game which you know we are working on some really cool web and integrating stuff and you know

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we have an app that we're going to be working on in the future as well so these are all great things for us to know in order to develop those type of

• 10:12

things and of course just figuring out how maybe we can incorporate some of those outside of the game things into the game

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right and then of course next month is going to be talking about your fondest memories and

• 10:25

really give us your best ones y'all and if you have more than one feel free to share them i think from our perspective we want to

• 10:31

like bring back that nostalgia and so uh you know hopefully we're all

• 10:36

on the same page in regards to what those memories are um but yeah beyond that

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um we also have a reminder that our alpha one preview spot test is

• 10:49

coming up our next one we are basically doing them every wednesday if we can those are just

• 10:54

depending so if you do have alpha one axis you will get access to that currently the next one is scheduled for

• 11:00

june 2nd at noon to 5 p.m but we'll let you know if that changes and of course our next

• 11:06

uh un nda'ed one will you know be further down the line and we'll keep you guys informed of all of that

• 11:12

stuff and there is an art article about this as well if you want to go check it out on our news channel over in

• 11:18

the update on alpha1 schedule um and reminder that the nda for the visual aspect is is still in play so

• 11:25

no video no streaming no nothing like that but you can talk all you want about your experience and believe me y'all have been talking

• 11:32

we've been watching so many videos and speaking of videos it's a great segue to our

• 11:39

long-awaited content creator program as i announced last month we were going to be in we were going to be announcing it

• 11:44

it is announced it's live you can apply here's the caveat right now

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there's so many of you that have applied and that is amazing that's so amazing

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that we need a person to just run that so currently we are looking for an influencer relations specialist that

• 12:02

will be helping us run this program and we actually are going to be opening up a secondary program

• 12:08

that is going to be subsidiary of this program uh it's not going to be something you apply for yeah it's going to be

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basically a boot camp slash training we haven't come up with the final name of it i'm designing it at the moment but we

• 12:21

don't want to say no to all like a lot of you we want to we see that some of you are passionate you

• 12:26

want to create content we want you to create Ashes of Creation content but maybe you need a little help with like

• 12:32

your stream or how it runs or maybe you're not quite ready to be tagged as an official content creator and our

• 12:38

perspective um but we want to help you get there and so i literally messaged margaret and i was

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like margaret i'm like getting a lot of anxiety and i feel terrible about messaging thousands of people rejection letters

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and i was like are you going to give me a person and he was like yes yes and i was like all right then we're done

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because i just can't do everything um so i think we're really looking for that person if

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you know somebody who would be fantastic for that please send them our way we'd love for them to apply and of course we're going

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to pick the best candidate possible but yeah we we so it's going to take a little bit more time

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for us to finalize all of this and design this subsidiary program before we send out all of our acceptance letters

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to either one of these programs but we just wanted to kind of be upfront with you all that

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we're so happy that there's so many people who want to make Ashes of Creation content um so thank you that's huge um

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further beyond that i think that's all i got for updates oh it was a lot and i'm sorry i

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didn't have anything visual for you to look at other than our faces i normally do um that's the one thing i forgot i was

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trying to get everything set up before um so i'm gonna toss it over to our wonderful

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and glorious creative director steven sharif to talk a little bit more about our studio updates

- Studio Update

• 13:58

yes so um as usual we are always hiring and we have brought

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on some great people over the last month and a half or so we've actually just uh hired three

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additional uh producers as well which is great an engineer started last week we have a lot of

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um we have a recruiter an hr starting next week uh we're getting ready to move into the

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office we have we are actually in the building the server rooms are getting set up by

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i think tuesday or wednesday of next week all of the electrical is getting put in the cabling within the

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next week and a half and then hopefully around the middle of june we will be back in studio oh my gosh i can't

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believe i just said that um i'm looking forward to it

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uh i can't wait to actually be able to see the person's face that i'm talking to on the regular and collaborate and and

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have our such a different again oh yeah our monthly potlucks y'all we should just start

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we should honestly video the next the first potluck we have in the new studio we need to just video all of the food that our amazing

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developers create kevin and his unbelievable like chili's and meats that he brings in and his wife

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jerry is this absolute amazing cook i've ever seen it's like a dynamic duo the two of them

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um i mean really everybody brings in fun stuff margaret you're mac and cheese i remember i know everyone always wants

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it so i just i always bring just smacking but i make a lot of other stuff

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that's true that is true so people just request my mac and cheese so i usually make mac and cheese

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so so very excited to be back in studio i'm also super excited to start doing some job fairs um you know

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we have a lot of hires that we need to do over the next six months or so a lot of fun plans for that

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and um you know the funny thing is i we've onboarded a lot of people actually over the coveteer and um i don't even know these people's

• 16:02

faces i know i've seen it i i had a couple of uh parties at the house where we played

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some like super mario smash brothers brought over some switches did some board games and got to meet a

• 16:12

few people but uh uh there's still a lot i haven't met uh yet and i know we've had a lot of people

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move to san diego over the last few months um that we onboard who are remote uh but just excited to to get together

• 16:24

with those guys and gals and and you know get to know them yeah so that's exciting

• 16:30

we have done some group virtual get-togethers on zoom and stuff but it's you know it's not the same as seeing people

• 16:36

in real life and stephen's not drinking wine he's just fancy af and drinks out of wine glass i could use

• 16:43

the bottle but then they might yell at me i might have to like tear the label off or something i don't know oh yeah i'm always like no other brands

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uh i don't want us to get in trouble anymore so um and anything else uh so that's the

• 16:58

studio side the hiring side um anything else oh sorry and testing

• 17:03

testing has been going great as you guys know uh this month we had our weekend-long test with um you

• 17:09

know many of our alpha one testers i decided that in light of us pushing the

• 17:14

dates back as we did for the alpha one testing in the nda release that i would release the verbal nda so that people

• 17:19

get to talk about their experiences hopefully you guys have had an opportunity to jump onto our reddit or on the forums and

• 17:26

watch many of the content that's been created um or you know chat with people who are participating in the test on discord

• 17:33

um you know alpha one the preview to alpha one it is uh as i've said many times a very

• 17:39

technically oriented test you know where we have the core systems kind of um stood up in a bare bones fashion and

• 17:44

we're and we're vetting these things and you know it's not a content related test this is not a typical marketing oriented alpha this is a true

• 17:51

developmental alpha um and you know it's just it's been a real fun time watching people get into the

• 17:58

game that you've been building for a long time and seeing you know even in the state

• 18:04

now which is nowhere near what it will be at launch to see the people's reactions on

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um on the videos that they're creating talking about how much fun they've had to read their responses on our thread feedback you

• 18:17

know just uh kind of getting back to that nostalgia that you know so many of us have

• 18:23

experienced uh in wanting to relive that that first mmo experience and someone i mean it's

• 18:28

impossible really to get that back but it's fun to come close and it's fun to see you know people like experiencing some

• 18:35

of those emotions that they experienced with their first love uh so to speak um

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you know we have a long way to go and real big hats off to to everyone who is is taking the time to test um and

• 18:48

being very methodical in their approach to that testing submitting bug reports i mean we have thousands

• 18:53

of bug reports many of them duplicates but um we had i think we had like over two

• 18:58

thousand uh qa wrote it on three better yeah oh yes i'm sorry i don't wanna preempt that yeah yeah

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there's one from qa from sean um uh but yeah um testing's

• 19:09

been going great big big props to the testers um and hopefully you guys will enjoy the video that we're going to show you just here

• 19:15

in a little bit all right we got so much information too from profiles

• 19:21

and it's just not possible without all of your support and your testing yeah absolutely

• 19:26

important yes 100 i mean as kevin can tell you you know obviously we have simulated players

• 19:32

we have headless clients that we put into the game and bots and whatnot but you know there's only so much that you can script those bots to kind of do

• 19:39

and try and mirror real players as close as possible but it really just never gets to the real thing

• 19:44

and um yeah and yeah sorry go ahead nobody is as crazy as real players

• 19:50

that's true that is very true but yeah that's the studio update okay

• 19:57

um and of course we have a very long video for you all it's about 30 minutes um so we will be playing that next um

• 20:06

but i think you wanted to mention one more thing stephen yes yes i do want to mention one more thing those of you who

• 20:11

didn't have an opportunity to see our announcement yesterday um we did have to give a bittersweet

- Design Update which includes farewell to Jeff Bard, early Siege footage, how testing is assisting us with development, and progress towards Alpha One.

• 20:18

farewell to jeffrey bard our lead game designer um you know jeffrey had has been on the

• 20:23

project for over five years now i remember actually um

• 20:28

i remember when i first interviewed jeff i think i was interviewing him for a game writer position actually it wasn't for

• 20:34

league games i was i was interviewing for a game writer because i i um he came in and that's the position i had open interviewed him

• 20:41

you know we started uh working together and he was just he really lived up to his name as a bard

• 20:46

um he was kind of a jack of all trades so to speak and he was able to kind of you know hit

• 20:52

spots that needed to be hit when we were a really small team and over the years he really just grew

• 20:58

as a as a designer he grew into that role as a lead designer and really appreciative of the time that he

• 21:04

spent on the project jeff went to pursue you know one of his passions which is virtual reality and he's got a great gig

• 21:11

over at another company that's doing some fun things i think in the space so you know everybody here wishes jeff the best and we're very

• 21:18

appreciative for for the awesome uh talents that he provided the team and the in the company and the project

• 21:24

over the last four years and you know just from a a friend level i i shared a lot of passion uh for mmos

• 21:30

and for storytelling with jeff effect one one particular uh

• 21:37

event stands out to me early on in the company's inception we used to have a lot of pathfinder sessions you

• 21:44

know tabletop role-playing game we used to uh game together at my place you know every weekend and

• 21:50

there was this i'm gonna tell the story jeff might hate me for it but i don't know there was this one time

• 21:55

where johnny kevin was there too i think actually we

• 22:01

had a great idea to uh okay here i'll just explain like this so i had on my phone this like nuclear

• 22:09

attack uh video right and it was basically like this thing on the travel channel it was

• 22:14

like talking about like you know food in russia or whatever and i streamed it into my theater and um and i had it like playing for

• 22:22

minutes prior to the uh to anybody arriving so it was like some lead up time and we were all

• 22:27

sitting down and gaming and this story is going to speak a little bit true to jeff's gaming spirit

• 22:32

he's the gamer inside of him but um so the the thing was playing in the theater in the background and like after about 10 minutes and we're all

• 22:38

like getting situated and getting ready to start our rpg you know and we're gonna start playing and whatnot and um

• 22:45

this emergency warning thing comes on the screen right and it's you know it's doing that uh emergency

• 22:50

and it's like this is a message from your civil defense and like a nuclear missile launch has been detected and is right you're saying go crazy and everyone's

• 22:57

face jeff's included was just like oh my god what's happening and i was like guys it's all right we need to get into the bunker you know i

• 23:03

said i said like we had a bunker but in actuality it was like my generator room and i was like jeff we need to get to

• 23:08

the book or he's like no i need to call my wife and i was like jeff there's no time we have to run to the bunker now and he's like all right well let me get

• 23:14

my dice so he ran to the table and he got his

• 23:19

d20 and his dice and he was like all right so we walk into the room and i'm just like

• 23:25

the door will open in a second to the bunker don't worry and he's just standing there with his laptop and his character and his hand

• 23:31

and his dice and he's like ready to walk into the bunker i'm just like deaf jeff your first

• 23:36

thought was the dice come on man but you know that was just the true gamer inside of him of course kevin was

• 23:43

as calm as possible you know you see kevin right here he's just like yeah it'll be about two hours before it

• 23:48

hits us we got some time don't worry about it yeah i wanted to get some food i had a hangover like nobody's business from the

• 23:55

previous night it was great times i actually recorded that i put it on a video too

• 24:02

um but yeah no it was it was it was pretty funny um the funny thing was my wife was in la

• 24:08

that weekend so i'm like hey uh you need to like get underground yeah that's right you called her you were

• 24:13

like babe i can't explain get on the ground you have about two hours all and the obviously in california we

• 24:20

don't dig holes in the desert so there is no underground so yeah but um regardless you know like i

• 24:27

said we're very appreciative of jeff's work on the project um he did a great job in in spearheading you know many of my

• 24:34

design philosophies his you know we shared a lot of that together i have obviously i have a very specific vision for ashes and um jeff did an

• 24:42

exemplary job championing um that vision and we wish him all the best in the future and and hope he um we

• 24:48

can't wait to see his reveal um i think it's a big ip he's working on um and uh excited to see what he does so

• 24:56

best of luck to you jeff the community wishes you well and everybody here at intrepid wishes you well as well go get them man

• 25:02

yeah uh i wish him the best of luck and of course i'll see him around we'll do lunches and stuff oh can i give

• 25:08

you one more story about jeff i'm so sorry can i give you just one more story okay i'm sorry

• 25:15

this is gonna be a really long stream y'all this i know hold on this is a hilarious one too

• 25:20

uh so okay we were at the studio and i think we were probably about 40 50 people this was like three or f i

• 25:27

think it's like three or four years ago and um one of my good friends is a police officer here in san diego

• 25:34

and uh his name's uh uh sergeant william tracy um and um i was telling him like

• 25:41

hey you know we're getting these like great these just crazy people on reddit are

• 25:46

talking about how like oh this project's a scam and stuff and it's like a pyramid scheme or whatever right so i was like i

• 25:52

would love it if you could come into the studio and fake arrest me in front of my team and he was like okay i can totally

• 25:59

do that so i'm sitting there in the studio and i'm like writing on the whiteboard in the conference room

• 26:05

and this police officer walks into the into the middle of the studio and he screamed he's like says out to the

• 26:11

series like i need to see steven sharif immediately and one of one of the people is like pointing over to uh

• 26:17

to the conference room and and i walk out and i'm like i'm steven sharif how can i help you and he's like you're under arrest he

• 26:23

pulls out his like handcuffs and he starts like cuffing me in front of the team and he tells the team he's like i need all of you to step away from your desks

• 26:29

immediately and i'm looking over at jeff and his face just turns like ghost white just like complete ghost way he's

• 26:35

like oh no oh my god he's like standing there he gets up and everybody's like walking

• 26:41

around and like standing there and the guy's like we've heard some reports about this company and we're here to arrest this

• 26:46

guy and now listen i had john had the best idea and i should thinking back i should

• 26:52

have done this but i decided not to what i wanted to do was take like a bag of baking powder and

• 26:59

tape it under jeff's chair and have the officer say like there's a drug thing going on throughout this company

• 27:05

and i was just going to be like yeah jeff made me do it it's under his chair grab it from jeff

• 27:10

and i decided not to do it but it was oh my god it's awful stephen awfully great by the way when we

• 27:19

when i started we put in the handbook no joking no more pranks

• 27:27

yeah it's in the handbook also at one point he said uh i'm sorry but your car's been impounded

• 27:34

that's right i remember that it was good times but anyways we had a

• 27:39

lot of great memories of jeff and and like i said we all wish him well and and look forward to everything and all the successes he does

• 27:45

he does yeah i got to work with jeff twice because i also worked with him at a previous company so

• 27:52

it's it's been a blessing and he's a really technical guy and uh go get him in yeah i've gotten to

• 27:58

work with him this is my second round working with him too so i'm hoping wish him the best and with that i

• 28:04

think uh before stephen says another story and i lose my heart i'm gonna i'm gonna switch

• 28:12

over and we're gonna play quite a long video do you wanna do a little preface on this video of course reminder that you know everything here

• 28:18

that you're seeing is you know an alpha one preview still many bugs many issues

• 28:24

there will be fixes so just pre-emphasizing that part absolutely um so just uh yes to to jump

• 28:31

on that real quick there is one particular bug you're gonna notice in this video and it is a ui uh bug that uh constantly

• 28:38

shows a headline of like a control point being taken so apologies for that it is alpha there's

• 28:44

still a lot of um you know bug fixing and polishing and you know just massaging some of these systems to to

• 28:52

continue working well but the big thing i wanted to show you guys and this is obviously you know

• 28:57

our whole approach to development is transparency right and uh we want to give you a look every step of the way

• 29:02

and um you know in a month this particular system the sieges is going to be in a much much better

• 29:09

state but at least you get to see a preview of it now and it's pretty fun right on the networking side i think we had almost

• 29:15

300 participants uh in the siege for the first test which was kind of crazy and then and

• 29:22

then i wanted to capture footage so i did a second test with only like 120 or 130 people

• 29:27

um but uh you know we had a lot of fun as you guys know the sieges are are going to be a daily event for the

• 29:33

alpha one when it launches it's a great way for us to collect uh density data

• 29:39

right it's a great way for us to kind of push the limitations of of what our networking layer is capable

• 29:44

of providing um from a performance standpoint and um you know it's it's it's also a fun

• 29:49

activity and it's representative of you know the core systems and and kind of what we're trying to achieve with Ashes of Creation and uh you know

• 29:56

it's guild-centric community-centric um you know it's a it's a risk versus reward

• 30:01

uh that people can opt into and um you know we had a lot of fun i think last night uh the people who

• 30:07

participated and we're looking forward to doing more testing uh with this particular system yeah in the first round

• 30:13

i was there for that but i wasn't there for the recording part because my computer blew up but uh people were super serious like

• 30:21

they were like trying to coordinate and stuff it was great they're like they're coming to the north gate get out it was great so this

• 30:28

is west gate it was great it was a lot of fun all right well we're gonna play this

• 30:34

video and we'll see you all in about 30 minutes

• 30:39

glorious Ashes of Creation community welcome to yet another stream

• 30:48

another video inside the alpha one preview testing of ashes

• 30:53

of creation i'm excited that you were able to join us today we have a fun-filled action-packed recording for

• 31:01

you it is currently 10 38 pm thursday pacific standard time

• 31:09

and i am joined by only the bravest of soldiers that vera has to offer

• 31:16

for i stand within the keep of the most noble castle of the dunes and kill dwarves

• 31:23

and ahead of me lies a fight that would tear out the heart of the

• 31:29

bravest men and women of course but as you can see here i am

• 31:34

joined by the most glorious of defenders

• 31:39

to have ever walked the face of vera show me your teeth defenders jump rise

• 31:49

to this day we fight in defense of our homes all right sorry i just wanna repeat a

• 31:55

little bit um guys we're excited to show you some of the seeds testing now obviously this is going to be a little bit uh

• 32:03

maybe buggy we'll see we just did a little test with over 200 participants

• 32:08

in the siege and i'm going to be taking you through some of the uh event i'm joined by

• 32:17

my compatriots at intrepid uh the glorious dread aka trad thompson one of

• 32:22

our senior designers on Ashes of Creation how you doing buddy hello hello get to see everybody again

• 32:29

and we also have with us uh the amazing the tiniest but not in this case the

• 32:35

tiniest of toasts i'm still a pretty tiny toast even though it's not my name and i am

• 32:40

very ready to loose the foxes of war yes let's slip the foxes of wool

• 32:47

and with us as well a recurring guest now the great and powerful mr chris giusto

• 32:54

how you doing buddy good good happy to be here happy to have you

• 32:59

so i heard from a little bird that there might be some people

• 33:05

who are attempting to take our castle from us but just to give you guys an idea of what we're going to do here um

• 33:11

and i guess i should mount up perfect um just to give you guys an idea of what

• 33:17

we want to do here um this siege zone has a couple uh actually has three dragons you saw one

• 33:23

of them in the last stream um we're gonna take you over and i think what we're gonna start with is trying to take down that frost

• 33:30

dragon because he's been over there causing some storms and some snow and um killing dragons in the siege

• 33:38

actually gives you buffs um so before we actually get into a fight with the uh incoming attackers who we believe

• 33:45

will be here shortly uh we're gonna try to get ourselves a buff by defeating that frost dragon what do you guys say we run out of these

• 33:51

halls and we go and take that beast down i say we're definitely ready to break oh

• 33:57

yes we are ready let's do it let's go

• 34:02

where do we go i've only been lord of this castle for about a minute follow me can you follow him yes

• 34:10

that was like a little exit down here all right oh is this my throne room

• 34:18

this is my throne room especially for you let me just look at the throne real

• 34:24

quick is there like a little crown on there for me yes there totally is oh i love it all right now how do we get

• 34:30

out of here uh talk to the portal man and he will take you or the sergeant of the vanguard and he will

• 34:36

take you out the door ah brave soldier do you wish to step outside and harry the flanks of our foes

• 34:43

indeed please allow me to pass i like that i'm so polite this is a war

• 34:50

do these people not know this is a war wow look at that we have some pretty awesome still diplomacy they're not very nice to attackers to

• 34:56

try and talk to them oh that's good we have some ballistas up here loving it and jump on my mount

• 35:03

i'm gonna just is the plural of ballistas ballista or bliss day blissed eye ballistai is that how it's

• 35:10

pronounced oh it's a good thing that the gates are up intact yeah i think it is bliss um all right let's head out out the

• 35:16

front gates we fear no man or woman or maybe women or dwarf men

• 35:22

or elf yes ah welcome to the world of vera let us go to the

• 35:29

frost dragon there we must find people waiting for you here we must move with haste because i know

• 35:36

the attackers are preparing their assault

• 35:41

i love this ram by the way

• 35:47

so who worked on this dragon by the way uh chong did chong did that's right and i hear that

• 35:53

this guy has actually quite a uh quite a punchy pack

• 35:58

yeah so he's got a couple different mechanics um the biggest one is gonna be uh like this thing that you kind of have

• 36:05

to dance around um i don't wanna really spoil anything but um be ready to stay on your toes

• 36:10

all right who's our tank i guess me all right go for it you want to get some

• 36:17

hate up we just go for it

• 36:23

don't channel stay away from those things they're dangerous

• 36:28

bring it down

• 36:39

now what do we need to look out for so he's got a couple different moves um his cross breath is really really

• 36:46

dangerous um and then you'll know it when you see it but he's gonna put ice waves on the

• 36:52

ground like he's doing right now and you don't want to get hit by them

• 36:57

oh what's he doing it's like a fight here

• 37:24

that looks like a big angry aoe

• 37:37

careful defenders don't be channeled oh we're bringing him down a little bit

• 37:46

so he sits out these kind of ice crystals huh yeah so you don't want to get hit by

• 37:51

them they'll lock you in place and it combos in a really dangerous way

• 37:58

from the ground

• 38:06

it's funny i don't see any ice crystals for some reason are you seeing them i think they're

• 38:13

gonna be later stage oh okay gotta go

• 38:30

activate my action mode

• 38:41

oh no i'm ported out just the right time

• 38:55

oh if we can bring him down oh no he's flying

• 39:05

oh no i see the ice crystals oh i died i need a res oh no somebody

• 39:12

reads them i'm getting you up gotcha

• 39:21

i need a heal

• 39:26

oh no i think we just lost half of our time i

• 39:33

think we just lost half of our right yeah we need reza's i need heals

• 39:42

oh somebody became a mayor clumsy was elected

• 39:49

i don't know if i trust a man named clunky to be mayor i got you stephen oh thank you i'm

• 39:55

running out of mana i'm out of mana i'm still pretty good so

• 40:00

let me know if you need heals or resistance we got him almost at half health

• 40:07

oh god oh shoot

• 40:14

i don't know i got pretty good

• 40:36

oh

• 40:49

yeah we can do this easily we just need people to obey the mechanics coming back

• 40:56

i'm out of uh i'm out of mana oh all these ice comes back from my whip

• 41:01

oh don't stand in the middle of that dread you don't want to stand in the middle of that

• 41:13

are these attackers i see attackers here oh no no no those are defenders okay

• 41:22

i love the icons in here for them too oh no no i got comboed by a breath

• 41:30

attack oh no i got sent back to the spawn yeah that's bad oh let's hope the

• 41:37

attackers aren't taking advantage of this opportunity and approaching the walls with the

• 41:42

trebuchets that would be unfortunate yeah hurry back i think you know they may have caught in wind

• 41:49

of our cotton they may have they may have caught wind of us trying to kill the ice dragon

• 41:58

we probably should actually reinforce the walls for their approach should we bail yeah i think we need to

• 42:04

sound the alarm fail back to the walls

• 42:10

tactical retreat are they stealing the kill because we could probably take it back

• 42:15

i don't know where they are do we have any scouts or any eyes on them i don't think i've got no eyes i'm just

• 42:22

gonna get near the front gate and watch with one of the uh ballistas

• 42:29

but i see that the that we have a control point for

• 42:34

let me jump on this all right i'm on a ballista

• 42:42

but i don't see anybody yet i'm heading back i'm going to go check

• 42:50

i want to see what the dragon's doing quick everyone back this dragon is probably being kited back

• 42:55

to back to our safe harbor i will stand tall in front of the gates

• 43:01

oh i just saw a trebuchet fire i think i just saw trebuchet

• 43:06

should i take the risk and investigate yeah maybe that'd be good we should we need some scouts yeah all right i'm

• 43:12

going for it i'm going on my selfie i'm just watching right now

• 43:21

now you got to be careful those of you guys who are manning the um the ballistas the trebuchets have a

• 43:27

further distance on their projectile so we need to wait until we literally see the whites of their

• 43:34

eyes they're coming they're coming where where which side which side off the

• 43:39

left side if you're looking away from the castle stage left alright stand by everybody

• 43:46

also ice dragon is reset nobody's on it sweet

• 43:54

standby hold your fire ballistas hold your fire

• 44:05

are they on the field yet no okay they're not on the field they're all to the left of us in front

• 44:11

of the poison dragon oh i see you see them should we rush them

• 44:16

oh i'm sorry they're coming over there take them off guard over there

• 44:22

i don't know if we should meet them on the field just yet what do you think i mean we'll just respawn so we might as

• 44:27

well just kill them also all right i don't even see them yet hold on

• 44:33

oh i start i'm seeing them beans allow me control of this ballista

• 44:40

thank you sir all right they're diverting

• 44:46

oh no they aren't everything where's their trebuchets

• 44:51

they must be hiding them i don't see the trebuchets just yet try to target

• 44:57

lead the target if you can

• 45:03

all right pull them to the right of the castle we should we should as soon as we see their trebuchets we

• 45:08

should probably meet them on the field can you take down trebuchets with

• 45:14

regular attacks or do they have to be taken down yes yes with auto attacks

• 45:31

oh that says control point two how close is that it's pretty far off okay

• 45:38

[Applause] control point one

• 45:48

i don't see them yet i saw some of them

• 45:53

we just wiped a ton of their squad off the face oh i see the trebuchets

• 45:58

focus fire the trebuchets let's jump down and push push on them everyone jump down and push on them unless you're on a ballista

• 46:10

kill the trebuchets if you can don't let them shoot at the door

• 46:37

destroy it i think we got one down yes you got it down good job nicely done

• 46:44

there's still three oh my god they have four on the hill

• 46:52

let's push out

• 46:58

try to kill the

• 47:09

oh drivers see somebody up here envious

• 47:19

oh no oh no they're chasing me

• 47:25

all right another trebuchet is down

• 47:36

oh there's asmin bold asman goldbald get him have him on target

• 47:58

yes secure the citadel oh no oh no no i got killed

• 48:06

by cersei's

• 48:13

have to run back out you know what we will take flight

• 48:20

survey the field from above oh we've got a red dragon coming down the hill oh i

• 48:25

see it fire dragon

• 48:34

i found like this underground tunnel area

• 48:40

oh you guys will notice there's a little bit of a bug with the uh channeling of control points try to stay clear of

• 48:45

those control points

• 48:54

how are gates looking i don't even think they touch the gate

• 49:00

oh somebody's over there are they they're channeling control

• 49:07

point five they should be if i know my math

• 49:14

i might not though

• 49:24

attackers at the right gate for defenders got it

• 49:32

oh they did they destroyed this gate over here oh they're out in front of it we need to

• 49:42

rally oh charge them don't let them sit out there charge

• 50:10

i got mcstackerson on my target he's going down got him

• 50:17

damaged the gate with just their regular attacks too not just yes yes their regular attacks and damage

• 50:22

they were sneaking us they were trying to distract us with their war machines

• 50:40

[Music] oh attackers are channeling the throw what

• 50:47

oh we got this defenders rally to our homeland

• 50:54

all right we need to hold sorry for the spam of the control point

• 51:00

everybody what it's a bug welcome to alpha we need to get in

• 51:10

all right i'm in where's this person in the throat room

• 51:18

do we have eyes in there we're working

• 51:30

i wonder if they're under the throne i don't think so i don't think so either

• 51:46

[Music] all right let's see where they are

• 51:52

okay i guess we should probably leave at least a couple people here two people to watch the throne the rest

• 51:59

of us should go out and meet them on the field

• 52:10

we must protect these valuable chests in the throne room yeah i wonder what's in the chest

• 52:16

all right remember where's control point five oh it's down below got it they are

• 52:23

actually capturing it

• 52:30

they're capturing it see if we can rain down fiery hell upon them

• 52:44

whoops i totally accidentally just jumped down here uh hopefully they don't see me

• 53:02

oh no that was not where i wanted to be

• 53:10

you know again stream i'm going to have to apologize but i want to get you good footage so i think i might need to cheat just a little bit

• 53:28

all right i have i'm a little beef here now hold on

• 53:39

all right i think we're ready i think we're ready

• 53:47

let's see what we can do how's it how's the front looking no one on the right side

• 53:56

didn't see anyone on the left either i'm gonna go yeah corey corey and i have been holding

• 54:03

the right so it's pretty good

• 54:09

i am now approaching they just took the front they're taking the front gate oh no do we have folks on the ballista

• 54:16

up there oh i see the gates getting destroyed

• 54:21

all right we took him down

• 54:30

i love the appearance of the half-demolished gate i'm ready to fight

• 54:46

show me where they are can i heal the gate with my heel spells

• 54:52

no you cannot dang it i tried all right we should invite the

• 55:00

attackers to stand against us at the front gate

• 55:06

in their entirety and we shall charge at them let them form across from us all right

• 55:14

we should let them form and then they must slash bal before we're agreed

• 55:21

attackers if you can hear me form at the front gate across the way

• 55:27

oh i see there's a dragon up there it's moving around

• 55:36

do not engage merely form yourselves and we shall see

• 55:44

who can withstand the other

• 55:51

ballistas hold your fire extend the courtesy

• 55:59

they brought a truck stop firing

• 56:07

all right we shall meet on the battlefield in 10 second countdown

• 56:16

in nine eight seven six

• 56:23

came after seven five four three two

• 56:30

one for narnia

• 56:59

oh so many shield through

• 57:05

oh no i'm just getting

• 57:22

push into them

• 57:36

push it to the recording because this is thing i know i hope the recording's working

• 57:46

they flee we appear to have scattered their rings they're coming back though they're coming back and forth oh no yeah i see

• 57:52

him i see

• 58:02

i've been down frozen down

• 58:14

i'm in the midst of them

• 58:20

they don't know i have the strength of the gods behind me

• 58:30

i feel like i'm on the battlefield with all these meteor explosions

• 58:36

oh yeah let me get a look

• 58:50

so the great thing you guys are watching is the network is handling this

• 58:58

you know 100 plus players right now pretty well and as you all know our strategy for

• 59:06

castle sieges are intending to be 250 versus 250 and uh prior to this test we had a test

• 59:12

of about i think we had about 230 or so players in this fight and while there

• 59:18

were you know the bugs were more prevalent um the network actually wasn't too bad

• 59:24

let's push into their camp if we can

• 59:30

lead us on your mighty griffin i'm actually going to aggro the uh the dragon come on buddy we need your

• 59:38

help come fight with us yes

• 59:44

seek vengeance oh no somebody pulled me down oh there's talents get back here

• 1:00:03

oh no are we going to spawn camp these poor guys spawn camped them i got two up here

• 1:00:26

oh

• 1:00:36

oh no where'd the dragon go

• 1:00:51

oh he's got a friend ironsmithing they have a respondent force

• 1:01:00

oh no oh whoa whoa whoa where did all these guys come

• 1:01:08

from

• 1:01:17

can't take me they got me

• 1:01:22

sorry

• 1:01:32

i'm just getting like ripped apart over here luckily i gave myself a bunch

• 1:01:42

oh they might actually bring me down

• 1:01:48

oh no oh no i need to get out of here i can't even move i'm just getting cc

• 1:01:55

locked no get off of me i'm i'm the king

• 1:02:12

where's my defenders i'm coming slow oh no no i just died

• 1:02:20

oh i just died well i think we'll end it there

• 1:02:26

oh i hope you guys enjoyed just a little look at the uh castle siege system that's in alpha one

• 1:02:32

uh it still needs a lot of work obviously there's a lot of polish to be had some bugs to be fixed but uh

• 1:02:39

these are gonna be running four times a day actually during the month-long alpha test and um they run about an hour long uh we

• 1:02:46

reduce the the time um but uh victory conditions for the

• 1:02:51

attackers obviously is to capture the final control point which is the throne and then for the defenders there will be

• 1:02:57

a uh npc the basically the sergeant-at-arms for the attacking side

• 1:03:02

that you can kill or running out the clock um i'm just going to run up here and uh with that being said want to

• 1:03:09

thank everybody for tuning in we'll see you back on stream hope you guys enjoyed

• 1:03:14

and long live era oh they're like breaking through the gate right now they're storming the

• 1:03:20

castle are they should i wait until they see if they can actually break through the gate they did they broke through one of them well i

• 1:03:26

think they're actually oh no they're breaking down the uh the inner keep gate

• 1:03:32

okay we'll just see if the oh no it's falling apart most of our forces are right there

• 1:03:39

i'm gonna sneak up on them yeah they're definitely breaking through the gate right now

• 1:03:46

i'm just gonna um hold on

• 1:03:55

oh i'm killing a whole bunch of them yeah they're definitely dropping aoe

• 1:04:01

the gate is like getting torn apart right now

• 1:04:07

oh no i think you guys wiped them actually come yeah come out because i dropped a

• 1:04:12

hollywood ground on the whole group oh man all right we'll see you guys back on stream hope you guys enjoy

• 1:04:18

bye everybody all right well we hope you all enjoyed

• 1:04:25

that we'll have it kind of running in the background whilst we chat a little bit more but um i did want to i saw one topic

• 1:04:33

that kind of came up a couple times which was are there going to be ways to repair walls siege machines things like that

• 1:04:40

yeah absolutely so that's not going to be present in alpha but those are

• 1:04:45

long-term designs for these types of events right is you know obviously there's a lot of

• 1:04:50

ancillary activities that can be had during sieges this is kind of so you just kind

• 1:04:56

of take a few forms right it's obviously strategy and tactics and you know raid versus raid components but

• 1:05:02

also you want to have like individual contributions where players can do things you know during the siege to aid

• 1:05:09

in the greater effort so to speak and it doesn't require you having you know 50 people by your

• 1:05:14

side to effectuate that you know influence over something so repairs are great ways to do that

• 1:05:19

repairs for walls repairs for gates um being able to spawn and and essentially

• 1:05:24

craft uh the designs for specific types of siege weapons to provide those to the team there's a lot of i mean you know wiki is

• 1:05:32

a great source and we've talked about this in the past um but uh uh there's a lot of intended designs what you're seeing here

• 1:05:38

is again what alpha one's all about that core system the base functionality you know

• 1:05:44

we're vetting can i hit creature will it take damage right if i use spell

• 1:05:50

this type of spell will it put a hot a dot on somebody and a hot on this person like really testing the functionality

• 1:05:56

less about like how much balance is happening right like in regards to that and obviously

• 1:06:02

steven has to do a little cheating because he's trying to put on a good video for you all so if he just left his health at a normal

• 1:06:08

health yeah he would die because there's 50 people trying to kill him um so i just want to

• 1:06:13

put a little uh i want to make sure you guys get to see what's happening and and in order to do that sometimes i and i

• 1:06:20

still died but in order to do that sometimes i'd have to do some cheating um so i apologize for that i also saw

• 1:06:25

you know you guys might have seen this there wasn't really many diminishing there wasn't any diminishing returns on ccfx right i was getting like pulled in

• 1:06:31

every direction and constantly being tripped and knocked down and um you know those diminishing returns

• 1:06:37

aren't in yet um so there is going to be diminishing returns for ccfx i also noticed

• 1:06:42

uh you know i mentioned this prior to the video and mentioned during the video um there was a ui bug for the control

• 1:06:48

point spam uh you saw that on screen it was constantly updating control points as people were moving in and out of the

• 1:06:53

vicinity of those control points that that actually will be moved to a separate location

• 1:06:59

it'll have some cool down on it and it'll be kind of more minimized and the ability for the player to hide those

• 1:07:05

types of notifications right now it's just routed through the main broadcast messaging additionally you know one real important

• 1:07:11

takeaway from this i know you guys are seeing this it looks like fun

• 1:07:27

ti gamepl i'm recording recording in 4k footage on a wide screen monitor

• 1:07:33

so like you know you're seeing it from my perspective and it's looking smooth and especially you don't see this very

• 1:07:40

often in alpha versions of games or at least true alpha versions of games so i think that bodes very well for the

• 1:07:46

future and what our intents are from a massive multi-player standpoint right like

• 1:07:51

our our whole goal is to create these very fun and fluid and massive interactions i

• 1:07:57

mean that's the future in my opinion of gaming in general is to have that you know high participation and just

• 1:08:03

volume of players that are present in these types of activities now that doesn't mean that everything you do in an mmo will be a part of some massively

• 1:08:10

multiplayer component but in these types of high octane environments and sieges where

• 1:08:15

you know a lot of people are are making investments in the outcome of these types of activities it's fun to see that

• 1:08:21

you can actually participate without having to worry about your computer blowing up or you know working frame by

• 1:08:27

frame or networking not being good so you know a lot of the testing we've been doing lately has been to refine uh essentially

• 1:08:34

our um our networking layer are the optimizations uh you know the bugs that we find and all that stuff and kind of

• 1:08:41

keep it lean keep it uh performant um the other thing i noticed uh oh you already mentioned it was cheating

• 1:08:47

on the show yeah and that was a great segue actually to the next topic which incorporates mcp here

• 1:08:55

in regards to the performance and optimization stuff that our engineering team is doing in uh coercion with our design team

• 1:09:02

obviously um so we're going to talk a little bit about that and you know in regards to the play test and the progress

• 1:09:07

towards alpha one so if you want to kind of go over those things uh mcp and steven and i can add in some extra

• 1:09:14

topics here as as we go through it yeah sure um uh

• 1:09:20

yeah so basically the big thing we found out during our testing is we had

• 1:09:27

some sort of uh ghosted ai controllers that were just hanging out all over our world and they were just

• 1:09:34

increasing and not going away over time so we've decreased the the ticking on those but we have yet

• 1:09:41

to find the cause of the perpetrator but we've added instrumentation to discover

• 1:09:48

that so hopefully today or tomorrow and this is in regards to what you guys notice if you were in the

• 1:09:53

alpha one um where like the longer the servers went on the more you saw like

• 1:09:58

rubber banding and strange things happening um that was kind of correlating to this

• 1:10:04

issue that's the cause yeah and then the next

• 1:10:09

things that you guys are working on and focusing on which you know is obviously stuff that we're trying to work towards

• 1:10:15

as far as feedback which is you know performance optimizing um at the network level on the server

• 1:10:21

processing of npcs and client performance can you talk a little bit more about that yeah so every test what we do is we run

• 1:10:28

a series of profiles on the servers and also on the clients

• 1:10:34

and we also have profiling at the cloud level at the hosting level

• 1:10:41

so using those data points were able to identify during

• 1:10:46

these large tests what is the performance killer uh on the server or the client and then

• 1:10:52

we knock down it's like playing whack-a-mole you knock those down and then run profiles again

• 1:10:58

and get the next thing or the next four things that are that are causing it so it's an iterative process but having

• 1:11:05

these large-scale tests is really one of the few ways to to really find

• 1:11:11

these things that show up at scale yeah and if you guys i think there were a few questions regarding like what our

• 1:11:17

requirements are and specs in regards to that um we do have that on our support page in the faq

• 1:11:22

section you can see what our current expected requirements are for men spec

• 1:11:27

um and then what we recommend as well currently obviously if that changes we'll update those articles but

• 1:11:32

if you're looking for that information it is available to you already um next thing you guys were working on

• 1:11:38

was like the hitching and eliminating that stuff can you talk a little bit more about that side of things yes uh so one thing

• 1:11:45

that we do for optimization is we kind of merge character meshes together and

• 1:11:54

we weren't doing it in the most efficient manner and it was causing regeneration to occur pretty often which

• 1:12:02

would hitch the client as these things were merged together into a new mesh so alexi

• 1:12:08

did some fantastic work on that and knocked that all of that out so now we have a much

• 1:12:15

smoother performance with the client yeah and then another thing that

• 1:12:20

engineering is providing uh to design is you know we've talked about this in the past and you

• 1:12:26

likely saw in this video i you know i noticed there was a few comments in in the chat section about

• 1:12:31

combat and some of the changes that are occurring in combat obviously you know their visual changes that jim and adrian on the vfx side are

• 1:12:38

doing um with weapon trails and impact effects um and those are definitely getting refined

• 1:12:44

uh but additionally uh there's an entirely new ability system that's being coded on the back end

• 1:12:50

that's customized for particularly network optimization and we have a section for that stephen that right oh

• 1:12:56

i'm so sorry i just jumped the gun all right i'll wait for that section we have two more things that we wanted

• 1:13:02

to cover in regards to the alpha one and then let me comment real quick on the combat balance so i noticed many of you are

• 1:13:08

talking about like damage being done and like doesn't look like it's enough damage or hit points and stuff like that

• 1:13:14

two things on that front one is again this is not a content test so balance is kind of finger in the wind

• 1:13:22

at the moment most of balancing comes out of actual testing around those particular systems and we're not

• 1:13:29

focused on that at the moment right again this is about about the core functionality of of these types of systems not about

• 1:13:35

you know the refinement or um getting them prettied up per se so i wouldn't take too much stock or

• 1:13:42

concern in um you know how the balance is gonna uh gonna flesh out and then additionally

• 1:13:47

um you know when we talk about um uh participating in this test so right

• 1:13:54

now it only goes up to level 15 right and uh the composition of class skills or archetype

• 1:14:00

skills kind of has to tread a fine line between two roads one we wanted to be

• 1:14:06

representative of of skills not just that would traditionally be found 1 through 15 but we're actually

• 1:14:11

introducing some skills that might be found later because we want to test those particular ideas and how the skill functions so this is

• 1:14:19

kind of a bastardization so to speak of what leveling will look like and what skill

• 1:14:24

compositions will exist for particular archetypes in an environment like alpha where

• 1:14:30

you're not actually seeing what level 1 through 15 is going to really be like when the game launches but per se

• 1:14:35

how it is now so it can facilitate our needs during this alpha phase right and that's an important thing to keep in

• 1:14:42

mind yeah and if mcp you want to like touch on the top on the combat we'll we'll move forward on the comment we'll

• 1:14:47

come back to the other couple topics that you had here um you want to talk a little bit about

• 1:14:52

your guys's perspective on the combat ability stuff that you guys are working on yeah so a big part of

• 1:15:00

trying to improve performance is getting rid of our unreal actor based combat system so it was heavy

• 1:15:08

on putting in different new actors and spawning them to sort of control the flow of our abilities or attacks

• 1:15:15

spells etc so adam pippich has been working very hard on a newer

• 1:15:22

better more efficient system it also allows designers more control

• 1:15:28

and capability in setting up impactful and cool sort of uh

• 1:15:35

action combat it feels you know more actiony than than what we have um he's also been

• 1:15:42

aided by keenan in that effort so uh we've tried to give design and art maximum support so that we can

• 1:15:50

get this new system fleshed out over time and and to to the players

• 1:15:56

yeah and some of the additional changes that design's been doing kind of to the existing system while we're waiting for that to

• 1:16:01

to come into place you know brian ferguson and trad thompson

• 1:16:08

um have been uh working along with uh chris giusto and some of

• 1:16:13

the other designers as well i'm sorry for kids i've also been working on the particular system there's like a bunch of different

• 1:16:18

things but um uh kind of speeding up the combat the combo animations right the attacks on

• 1:16:24

the combo side and then also providing a little bit more versatility to the directional movement the rotational

• 1:16:29

movement between these combo attacks right now it's still root motion setup but we're going to be testing with some

• 1:16:34

split body animations and split body attacks over the next several weeks and then

• 1:16:40

additionally obviously you guys have seen as we've kind of incorporated more mobility components to

• 1:16:45

existing abilities such as the mage and the fireball this has been kind of uh taken broadly over across uh many of

• 1:16:52

the um excuse me the three archetypes that are available in uh alpha across many of their abilities um and

• 1:16:59

then we've also included a um the ability to kind of hold your q

• 1:17:04

or left mouse button uh to initiate and cycle through those attacks i know we had a lot of piano fingers out there

• 1:17:11

and um some early onset arthritis probably in a few joints um because i just had to

• 1:17:16

spam those uh but that's a lot we got a lot of feedback in regards to spamming the audio attack button um

• 1:17:24

and i know you talked a little bit about the split animation stephen but can you maybe go into a little bit more detail about like what that

• 1:17:30

is sure how that works because maybe not everyone understands exactly what that means absolutely so um if you guys recall you know about

• 1:17:36

uh two years ago or so um with the testing that we did during apoc uh a lot of that was focused around

• 1:17:43

getting action combat information and initially when we began that testing we had full split body

• 1:17:49

animations and uh combo attacks essentially with weapons where your upper body would perform the

• 1:17:54

animation of the attack right and that upper body would be locked but your lower body would be free to continue moving and that's what we refer to kind

• 1:18:00

of as that split body um so that allows you to move while you attack per se right now what you're seeing with

• 1:18:06

these combo attacks on the weapons front is that your body is essentially locked in this root motion where you're

• 1:18:12

moving forward with each attack and that can sometimes feel a little cumbersome right but the feedback we got early on during

• 1:18:17

apoc was that uh without that um weightedness that is incorporated from the root motion

• 1:18:23

it felt floaty and people you know didn't feel that the attacks were very substantial so

• 1:18:29

we introduced that root body motion um in order to provide some additional weight to the

• 1:18:34

attacks um now we're kind of rethinking that approach from uh from an action standpoint at least with regards

• 1:18:40

to the weapon attacks right um and the idea there and just to give further context

• 1:18:46

why weapon attacks are important a lot of times in mmos your weapon attacks aren't that important right it's all about your kind of ability system

• 1:18:52

um but the weapon attacks in Ashes of Creation are intended to provide actually these ancillary

• 1:18:57

status conditions that occur you can spec points into the different groupings and class of weapons that your character

• 1:19:02

might use uh so for example if you're uh wielding a dagger and you're doing these stab attacks it might have a

• 1:19:09

chance if you spec points into it to proc a bleed effect and that bleed effect will synergize then with your class kit

• 1:19:15

that you've specced into for your ability system so for example if you have a back stab against a target

• 1:19:21

that's bleeding you might deal amplified damage or you might you know

• 1:19:26

you might the target or you know snare them so to speak so um the uh the weapon attack is an

• 1:19:32

important component of the combat system so we want to make sure that as we're doing this combat revamp that we are

• 1:19:38

essentially taking into consideration player feedback and sentiment about how you know they want a reactive and more

• 1:19:43

mobile um uh weapon attack system

• 1:19:49

yeah it's really weird listen to your players i'm not sure about that one

• 1:19:54

that is true i didn't even think about that yeah that was weird um but yeah uh in regards to listening

• 1:20:00

to your players we are always putting up new forum threads for dub discussion guild discuss guild gatherings and other things uh

• 1:20:07

toast does an amazing job of putting those up and also compiling reports on those as well as the overall forums every

• 1:20:14

month and you know all of your guys's feedback and our social media folk uh peter is fantastic at putting

• 1:20:21

compiling together all of our social reports so all of the things that you guys send us there and then on the cs front adam so like

• 1:20:28

we're we're definitely any feedback that you guys sent us we're we're compiling those things we're you know analyzing data and you know

• 1:20:36

even outside of the game versus inside where you know uh maybe stephen and mcphee are more hands-on with that stuff

• 1:20:42

um we're listening in all the places as much as possible i'm going to go back a little bit to talk a little bit more

• 1:20:48

about siege and if you want to talk more about what kind of work you guys have been working on towards that mcp we'll start with you

• 1:20:54

and then stephen if you want to add anything on that front sure we had done a pretty substantial

• 1:21:00

amount of work in apocalypse and uh it wasn't something as i recall that we

• 1:21:05

had released to players in any sort of public format that we had in a lot of internal testing but

• 1:21:13

uh we were able to to bring all of that work over from uh the apocalypse project

• 1:21:20

uh into the mmo and that was done primarily by alexi and he did a

• 1:21:25

fantastic job so uh that would be the siege weapons uh you know the gates and

• 1:21:32

and the overall mechanics of how control point system the damage the um uh the respawn the team settings

• 1:21:41

um all of those things yeah guild registration all of that good stuff

• 1:21:47

yeah yeah and just to just to expand on that you know i know um we got a lot of flack for apoc in the

• 1:21:54

past but again all of those systems were designed for the mmorpg and um you know as we uh they were

• 1:22:01

intended to be isolated and testing platforms you know to get early data on that stuff and you know now

• 1:22:09

much time later as we have an alpha one present um we're able to move over uh that code

• 1:22:15

and introduce it as was intended into the mmo um and yeah alexis spearheaded that uh poured over and

• 1:22:21

did a great job i also want to add that all of our back end systems all of our platform uh

• 1:22:27

services all of that is a product of the of the apoc project and without that

• 1:22:34

we wouldn't be able to have a petrol launcher or hosting or anything for that matter yeah we had to build

• 1:22:40

everything from scratch it wasn't just lying on the floor for us to yeah let's talk a little bit about

• 1:22:45

that that's actually good sorry real quick that's actually a great important point uh kevin is you know a lot of times what

• 1:22:51

you'll find with other companies and other projects is that they're actually reusing stuff that they've built in the

• 1:22:58

past right and we are literally building everything from scratch so um you know with that being said you

• 1:23:04

know everything's being built in a particular fashion or way that's customized for our intents and that's a

• 1:23:09

good thing but that's you know why it takes time and that's why it takes testing and that's why it takes

• 1:23:15

uh feedback is because this is while it's not our first rodeo we have a lot of veteran developers

• 1:23:20

as a company and as a project as i said these things are being built from scratch and they require a lot of testing and a lot of a lot of time to

• 1:23:26

flesh out 100 um let's go into platform a little

• 1:23:32

bit more because obviously platform services handles you know our metrics our cloud

• 1:23:37

hosting or patcher or launcher our website like it's a lot of stuff can you go into detail and kind of what

• 1:23:43

that team is working on and how that affects the things that the players are experiencing

• 1:23:49

yeah so that team's led by mark storch and uh he's got uh tuan eric rich

• 1:23:55

uh working with him and they're doing a incredible job and then we have of course uh zim who is uh making sure

• 1:24:03

that all our hardware and everything functions like when he had to drop off a rig last night for you

• 1:24:08

thank you sim for coming over he i know you had him early morning because i think he had a morning at 8 am

• 1:24:15

to go back to the office together yeah [Music]

• 1:24:21

yeah so you know there was a couple weeks back he had to pop into our data center to

• 1:24:26

replace some stuff at like 4 a.m so it's it's uh it's an on-call kind of kind of job

• 1:24:32

and he rocks it uh so on the but on the platform and services side

• 1:24:37

uh mark's team has done an amazing job of standing up our hosting in the cloud of

• 1:24:43

making sure that everyone can patch and connect to the product they handle all the persistence of not only

• 1:24:50

the the characters but in the account data to make sure that you know people who have purchased

• 1:24:55

access uh packages uh are flagged properly to get in the testing and so forth and so on so it's

• 1:25:02

it's an enormous amount of work it's very technical and on top of that they put together a

• 1:25:07

lot of reporting so that we can look at uh real-time performance of these

• 1:25:13

different processes and then know where we need to do better yeah it's amazing

• 1:25:19

like i tell them thank you almost every single day not only are they assisting you know design and like production with

• 1:25:26

the the whole development of the product right but then they're also on my end assisting with community and cs like all the time in

• 1:25:33

regards to and i guess technically marketing it's more community but um on the web front with valor we're

• 1:25:40

working very closely with them and um you know a lot of the bugs and things that we encounter

• 1:25:46

for that you guys report through cs we are trying to resolve with them and that's on that team too

• 1:25:51

so they're just powerhouses you know killing it and uh mad shout out to them did you want to

• 1:25:57

add anything else on that front stephen no just just uh you know

• 1:26:05

i guess sentiment just to reiterate to you guys and i know we have a lot of you know support from the community and

• 1:26:12

a lot of uh a lot of anticipation um but just to

• 1:26:17

keep in mind like i can't reiterate the sentiment enough is that there's a lot of great people on

• 1:26:22

this project a lot of very talented individuals and you know the one key component i think

• 1:26:28

that we all share is we're very passionate about making a quality game

• 1:26:33

that lives up to the expectations and the um you know pride that players have within

• 1:26:38

this genre and um you know we're all mmo players so it's a lot of hard work a lot of long days and when we can jump

• 1:26:47

on and see your guys's support and your commentary and you know the the just the motivation to

• 1:26:54

continue these long days going forward that means a lot to everybody on the team and i just want to thank you guys for for

• 1:27:00

helping to foster a great community because even at this stage prior to the

• 1:27:06

game launching right we i think we've we've built a great community around this project um and i know that there's naysayers out

• 1:27:13

there and they're they've been slowly trickling in size down as we continue to show progress and

• 1:27:20

continue to show the fruits of our labor uh but you guys helping to to provide that positive commentary and that

• 1:27:27

and that support means the absolute world to us and and we really do appreciate it and when we go to bed at

• 1:27:32

night at least i know for myself when i go to bed at night and i'm you know doing it on my phone we go to bed at night if we go to bed at

• 1:27:38

night i'm playing on my phone and reading those it is fuel it is motivation um so i

• 1:27:44

can't express enough that appreciation and and hope you guys continue forward with that yeah and stephen had a thread that

• 1:27:50

he put up and you all submitted a lot of beautiful words to our dev team almost i think we sent our dev team

• 1:27:58

we're like spend an hour just read these comments from our players and warmed everyone's hearts and really like

• 1:28:05

you know lit the motivation fire underneath all of us i mean we're already excited for ourselves we want to

• 1:28:10

create the product so we can play it but it's really cool seeing that everyone else is just supporting us on that front

• 1:28:16

and i think this this is probably mmo six or seven for me but uh

• 1:28:22

i think yes like particular yeah this particular project i would say

• 1:28:28

i've this is the most passion i've seen since say i request one when i was on that team

• 1:28:34

and there's a enormous amount of passion on this team to bring you guys the best possible

• 1:28:41

experience we can yeah absolutely and a lot of this is you guys helping educate

• 1:28:48

people as well because i think there's a lot of misconceptions and you know that's where people go down a

• 1:28:54

weird trail because i think it's something else and i think a lot of you have been doing a great job answering questions and

• 1:28:59

helping inform people of what's actually happening and you know we're doing updates every month we

• 1:29:04

put out stuff every day almost on our social platforms so if you want to forward them our way we're continually trying to show you

• 1:29:10

guys progress as much as we possibly can and if you look at like this month versus last month versus last

• 1:29:16

year you can really see the difference in the progress that we've made um talking about progress let's talk a

• 1:29:23

little bit about build promotions and uh you know deployment and things like that and what you guys have been working towards

• 1:29:29

that so that exciting topic yeah this is hey man

• 1:29:35

we asked you on a social and you said you wanted more of this so here you go so yeah it's

• 1:29:42

it's it's an extremely important process like our builds take hours to to to compile the code and then

• 1:29:49

you know to package all the assets and then to to get it out into the the patcher system so we're always

• 1:29:56

looking to refine that and speed it up uh we have ashloth who is a

• 1:30:01

straight-up champion who has uh fixed so many issues with that and streamlined it and we're going to be

• 1:30:08

bringing on additional engineers uh to to handle the day-to-day integration

• 1:30:14

right now we we do the integrations uh ourselves most of the time it's ash

• 1:30:19

doing it um so it's it's a process that we keep refining uh but it's it's it's gotten better and

• 1:30:27

better and better over time so we're just pushing forward and refining it as we go

• 1:30:33

and if ash just gets sick we're all sad i still have nightmares over what that process was like about

• 1:30:38

three years ago yeah ash has refined that as a matter of fact yesterday when i woke up at like 3 30

• 1:30:46

and i was going to go kick off a build i was like wow ash is really streamlined streamlined this all i had to do was just log into

• 1:30:52

the box and click this button i was like all right cool yeah i think it like midnight that same

• 1:30:58

uh evening uh i had to go in and kill uh two of the processes i got on windows

• 1:31:05

update or something i don't know and then uh it was easy to restart the uh one of them so

• 1:31:11

it's getting better all right well that's kind of a culmination of you know

• 1:31:16

a lot of things regarding that but i want to talk a little bit about uh you know after

• 1:31:22

july after august you know after alpha one testing you had a couple

• 1:31:27

things that you guys that you wanted to discuss mcp and one of those in regards to

• 1:31:32

uh what you guys are going to be refocusing your efforts on in regards to new systems right so our typical process after we

• 1:31:40

get through a milestone is we're going to the the engineering team is going to work with stephen and

• 1:31:46

production to figure out our overall goals for the next testing

• 1:31:52

phase and then based on that we're going to put together all the tasks and then we're going to

• 1:31:58

give estimates on all of those engineering tasks as they apply to tools or game systems

• 1:32:05

or anything else to meet the company's goals for that next phase

• 1:32:10

and uh after after that has all been worked out and everyone's happy then

• 1:32:17

then that's when production can make decisions on what that date will look like

• 1:32:22

and that will also include the feedback from you all in regards to that month-long test um as well as

• 1:32:28

all of the testing leading up to that month-long test and what bugs need to fix what uh issues

• 1:32:33

pop up that we find out through that testing as well in order to meet those expectations and

• 1:32:39

just just to give some additional context there right like when you think about all of the systems and designs that are

• 1:32:45

present in Ashes of Creation alpha 1 predominantly and alpha 2

• 1:32:51

are going to be the the most influential testing phases for the

• 1:32:58

project right um you know after we kind of collect this data after we get feedback

• 1:33:03

and sentiment and we experience this stuff from you know from paper to actual implementation

• 1:33:09

um you know that's when we go back and we revise that's when we go back and we you know iterate upon and and that's

• 1:33:17

where the largest potential for changes can occur so i want to make sure that you know players are anticipating um that these are these are

• 1:33:24

very important testing periods uh because um this is where changes occur um and

• 1:33:30

you know we are we are very as margaret had said previously you know we we watch read everything you know

• 1:33:36

margaret and i watch read everything our develop we link what we watch i'm like working and

• 1:33:41

watching stuff and listening stuff in the background like my life is consumed by Ashes of Creation when i'm not

• 1:33:47

like during that weekend test actually i think i did the most crazy thing possible is where i was

• 1:33:54

i was like working and typing on slack and talking and and teamspeak i i had um two separate

• 1:34:00

videos on youtube playing simultaneously at different volumes so i could try to hear pick out points in each i know it was

• 1:34:06

totally crazy that's crazy but there was just so much content coming out from that weekend because i released that

• 1:34:11

verbal nda and there were so many people talking about i watched so much so i wanted to and then i was reading discord at the

• 1:34:17

same time so it's like i was like working out listening to your podcasts and videos like just crazy

• 1:34:22

yes but you know again that just goes to show the importance of these testing sessions and the the people who are participating

• 1:34:29

is that it does provide us valuable feedback and we take that feedback we internalize it we

• 1:34:35

you know digest it and we come up with actionable items you know from those things that we

• 1:34:41

want to test then further and to be clear on the community side when toast is compiling feet

• 1:34:46

uh things or rcs rep you know adam or our social person peter are kind

• 1:34:52

of like putting these reports together we just put what you guys say like we just put the feedback we don't give

• 1:34:57

development suggestions on how to fix it that's their you know like they decide how they want to resolve the issues

• 1:35:03

but we just make it very clear like here are the concerns of the community um and they can kind of take and analyze

• 1:35:08

the data that they have that correlates to those things um i think you look like you wanted to say something extra mcp

• 1:35:15

no just that the testing's invaluable and i often will ask steven if we can have

• 1:35:21

you know additional testing because uh if it just reveals uh new blogs or new

• 1:35:27

issues and we have to test all the fixes that we're trying to put in week after week a week to verify that we're giving you

• 1:35:34

guys the best experience yeah margaret i just want to note here that you heard it from mcp

• 1:35:39

yourself that when i come to you and tell you i need a test in like two hours and you're like but i need at least 24

• 1:35:45

to notify the players i just like p's fault that's not actually my fault i actually am just the

• 1:35:50

messenger so don't kill me on that sure i don't tell you it's more from my perspective i just want to make sure people can prepare like a lot of people

• 1:35:57

like oh i i want to take time off or oh i want to make sure like my kid is watched right like testers i'm compassionate about the

• 1:36:04

people and so i want to make sure they can they can play because like we we me and sarah and you

• 1:36:09

know maybe peter sees it on social a little bit we get to hear the other side of it where people like i didn't get to play because it was at this time or

• 1:36:16

i didn't have enough notice so we hear that stuff and we hear you we we're trying our best to make sure

• 1:36:21

you're notified via email via twitter via facebook my goal is to get mcp what mcp wants and that's all i really

• 1:36:28

you know have to worry about me too me too together we'll do it um speaking of testing i think this is a

• 1:36:35

great segue to our little love letter from our qa team so i'm gonna kind of read this off to

- Bonus QA Message

• 1:36:40

you guys uh it's beautiful i love it uh he says hale and well met glorious ashes

• 1:36:46

of creation testers my name is shawn ferenz i am i am not him but

• 1:36:52

you know you get where i'm going with this i am the manager of quality assurance on

• 1:36:57

Ashes of Creation and on behalf of the ashes of uh qa team i would like to extend a deep

• 1:37:04

and heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in testing Ashes of Creation during the weekend of may

• 1:37:09

14 through may 16th for our alpha 1 build in spite of instability and uncertainty

• 1:37:15

you have all proven to be invaluable in regards to your feedback and bug reports and

• 1:37:21

for that i cannot express my gratitude enough as many of you know developing an mmorpg is an epic endeavor

• 1:37:28

that is filled with trials and tribulations that no other kind of game will ever encounter

• 1:37:33

and you're illustrated and you've illustrated dedication or your illustrated dedication

• 1:37:38

has proven to our team that we are on a high road to the best mmorpg

• 1:37:44

gaming experience to date during this most recent testing period we received over 26

• 1:37:50

or 2 600 bug reports which have been an absolute boon to our testing process we review

• 1:37:56

each report individually and i continue to be impressed with how detailed and helpful

• 1:38:01

each of these reports has been like seriously you guys give repro steps and everything

• 1:38:07

super duper handy i greatly look forward to your feedback in the future

• 1:38:12

and hope you enjoy our content so far so thank you so much everybody i know i

• 1:38:18

almost said twenty six thousand that would have been a lot of books [Laughter]

• 1:38:23

no those two thousand six hundred a lot of them were repeats most of them were stuff that we were already on our known issues or things that qa

• 1:38:31

was aware of but there were quite a few that we had not caught before so really appreciate it and before we move

• 1:38:37

on to the art side of things i just want to reiterate something and i know you know there's

• 1:38:42

several thousand of you watching at the moment um but you know when people say when's the game

• 1:38:47

done when's the game done yeah i want to play i want to play around play play it's important to remember that mmos

• 1:38:54

typically only have you know one launch attempt

• 1:38:59

unless your final fantasy right so um we want to make sure we get it right and we want to make sure that we

• 1:39:05

are launching the game when it's ready per se and these these tests go to to that end right

• 1:39:11

those these this is what helps us get there uh but keep in mind again our foremost thought here

• 1:39:16

is quality um and what that means is we're gonna spend the time that's necessary so we'll keep you

• 1:39:23

abreast of all the changes and the updates with every monthly uh you know live stream that we do and

• 1:39:28

you'll see the process a part of the way and when we do launch it's going to be a magnificent and glorious event

• 1:39:36

but patience is key and and you know it's uh what's that old saying about patience

• 1:39:42

and fruit and ripe and i don't know patience is uh i don't remember what the thing is but

• 1:39:47

regardless there's a lot of different types of patience it's fruit it's fruit is sweet patience is bitter but it's fruit is

• 1:39:53

sweet that's what it is and that's an important thing to keep keep in mind so um yeah

• 1:40:00

awesome also i just wanted to say thank you so much sean and the qa team you are all absolute

• 1:40:07

beasts unbelievable beasts very very hard working and that's where the engineering team is

• 1:40:14

able to to really go to and for its information on what needs to be fixed and how to fix

• 1:40:20

it thanks to all the testers for submitting thousands of bugs and making me

• 1:40:26

miserable i appreciate it okay i love you the qa team is

• 1:40:32

unbelievable very well done job yeah they're been assisting with web qa too which is a whole other feat you know that's like

• 1:40:38

account process stuff which is insane um let's move on to our art stuff

• 1:40:45

i'm excited there's lots of cool stuff we may have to limit some of the questions by the way at the end

• 1:40:50

uh down to a few because we're getting long yeah the 1 pm i have kind of a hard stop

• 1:40:56

a little bit yeah i have a meeting oh really okay it's almost 1 p.m now let's go let's go

- Environment Art Update

• 1:41:02

quick um so first and foremost we have uh some concept art here that looks really cool again we are

• 1:41:08

showing off a lot of these like creatures the plants coming to life and things like that so

• 1:41:13

you might have seen some plants previously that were created in other development updates so keep an eye

• 1:41:18

out for those and of course these just gorgeous landscapes of uh different areas which is just

• 1:41:24

beautiful um we'll move on to the next one these images are just so

• 1:41:29

well finished i mean very um it looks these look amazing yeah our our

• 1:41:37

team we'll say it like a million times they're amazing uh the next thing here is the junior crypt now you guys have been seeing pieces and

• 1:41:43

objects and i will show some more of the objects uh that are in more of a like their work in progress states but you've seen some

• 1:41:50

of them previously as well and now you're going to continue to see the progress of them i like to try to show you

• 1:41:55

like the different elements as they add more textures to stuff as they implement them in games so you can see the

• 1:42:01

progress along the way but now you're seeing this in-game and what these look like

• 1:42:06

there yeah the environment team always does a great job bringing to life the concepts that

• 1:42:11

ryan richmond and his concept crew um you know put together really they do a

• 1:42:17

great job on modeling these assets and and building the world around them to make them so compelling and immersive

• 1:42:24

it's really we have such an amazing art team yeah and obviously the the crypt is

• 1:42:30

going to be telling its own little tale as you can probably see with these different dwarven

• 1:42:35

very dwarven junior dwarven uh style um i guess architecture uh

• 1:42:42

yeah absolutely yeah carpentry in some of these cases uh and then beyond that

• 1:42:50

i think i still have a couple more in this slideshow oh i could see this chest like you don't

• 1:42:56

you just want to grab it but then it's probably gonna like you pull it off and then something bad

• 1:43:03

dude mimics yeah they're scary better make sure you have some universal solvent

• 1:43:13

pores and dark traps there you go and then a bathtub you know you need your fancy bathtub to chill and relax

• 1:43:20

and in your freehold after all that fighting i can't wait to have this be an interactable bathtub that the player can

• 1:43:27

use e to like play an animation and get into the tub and turn the water on

• 1:43:32

yeah be awesome i'm excited for freehold stuff i know they're people do crazy things

• 1:43:39

and i'm excited to see what you as players do with them um and this is a rug i think this is the last one

• 1:43:46

our next one is siege which uh you all have kinda seen but obviously from the

• 1:43:51

artist perspective they're making sure all the textures um look beautiful and so they've been

• 1:43:57

re-texturing a lot of the objects because some of those were older objects when we were working on a

• 1:44:03

castle siege through apocalypse's testing ground and now we're kind of updating those objects but still using

• 1:44:09

the same thing so a lot of those things are kind of transferring over as steven and mcp stated i love how

• 1:44:15

when i have meetings with the art teams and i remember i remember very vividly like

• 1:44:20

this was three weeks ago i'm sitting with bacon and mia and tristan and i'm talking and i'm like you know

• 1:44:27

really not liking the way this castle is looking maybe you guys can do a pass on it and vegas like yep we'll grab it and then two weeks later i look at like oh

• 1:44:33

my god what did you do this looks so good thank god

• 1:44:38

they just are so talented and the great thing is like you know because we've been working together and they kind of have established

• 1:44:44

obviously the art style of the world you just kind of see these things start coming together i know early on we

• 1:44:50

got a lot of commentary about like oh you know things kind of feel out of place and we kind of had multiple directions on you know how we wanted to

• 1:44:55

do materials and textures all kinds of stuff and now just watching these these environments

• 1:45:00

in the world these props these architectural assets you know they just are starting to blend

• 1:45:06

so well and creating a really cool immersive vibe you know this this mood

• 1:45:11

um significantly and i noticed it as well with with the starting area uh in the alpha

• 1:45:18

it's just really come together they do such a great job yeah and you've gotten to see the mood and the goblin camp

• 1:45:24

that i showed there and now this in the graveyard perfect transition uh just the vibe of the fog kind of

• 1:45:30

coming through is very interesting and kind of catches your eye and obviously all the architecture that's

• 1:45:36

happening in all of these areas um and yeah the last one here is going to be the corrupted mushroom stuff which

• 1:45:42

you've kind of seen some of it when we like a couple maybe like two months ago or something like that we showed off

• 1:45:48

some corrupted area but now you're really seeing how uh it just keeps they keep adding more stuff to it man it just keeps looking

• 1:45:54

better and better and better i was talking sorry i remember i was talking about

• 1:46:00

these mushrooms to me up and bacon and i was like can we make these like super corrupt and like deformed and decrepit and like heavy red

• 1:46:07

influences and he was like yeah i can do that i love mia oh i know uh

• 1:46:13

and then of course we have um more character stuff so the first thing here is

• 1:46:19

the kayla crown um stephen do you know what this was made for this gorgeous crown yes so that will

• 1:46:26

actually be the control point to capture the castles that crown that sits atop the throne

• 1:46:32

um so you may have seen it in the video i it was kind of sitting there on the cushion of the of the throne or i don't know if there's

• 1:46:38

a cushion per se but the idea here is that you know when the when castle sieges are in their

• 1:46:44

kind of full implementation is this will actually be a skin

• 1:46:49

that the player who owns the castle when they succeed not now for one but eventually uh who

• 1:46:55

owns a castle they'll be able to apply this skin uh temporarily while they own that castle to their helmet and can wear the

• 1:47:01

crown walking around so you'll be royalty and you could you can get flying mounts and all kinds of stuff yes um i'm

• 1:47:08

excited to see that i love the idea of you see like someone flying over you're like you know that that's somebody important

• 1:47:13

like that's so cool um and of course uh this is one of them there may be

• 1:47:20

you know some other crowds out there there will be many there'll be a crown so there's five castles that are intended for ashes of

• 1:47:27

creation each will have its own distinct crown next up we have some really cool

• 1:47:32

hairstyles that of course stephen has leaked a couple if you've been paying attention to our

• 1:47:37

social channels or uh discord or other places you guys will

• 1:47:42

see as you know we we kind of show you these updates to the character side that the character team

• 1:47:48

chris atkins and jinzy and danny and eli and manny um you know they're

• 1:47:55

they're in carson they're doing an amazing job um really moving forward kind of the

• 1:48:01

details of the characters and um you know you're starting to see that what that quality is going to be like i

• 1:48:08

mean this is kind of like this the i would say probably the third pass on on characters overall

• 1:48:14

um and you know a lot of times people ask well why haven't we seen the other races and stuff you know we established we

• 1:48:19

want to establish kind of the the quality bar and process with these races first

• 1:48:25

and then when we move into further content production for the other races right we kind of have have those pipelines in place and

• 1:48:31

we have the the processes in place and we know how to approach them so

• 1:48:36

um you're starting to see that uh that quality here rise to the point where we want it to be

• 1:48:41

and they're doing a really just amazing job the character team and the animation team i mean

• 1:48:46

you'll see over time just just how our animations are constantly getting more in-depth and

• 1:48:53

improved and you know fluid and um you know chris myers and

• 1:48:58

and um minnie mcp or alex uh mcp son actually yeah animators we call

• 1:49:05

him minnie mcphee very talented animator uh along with uh he's hilarious and uh brad

• 1:49:12

um you know there's there's just such talent on the art side and and it's great seeing you know them bring to life these

• 1:49:18

creatures these characters this this world um in a fluid way very cool

• 1:49:24

and this is if you guys have seen the corvette castigator these are some variants of it that you may see on other npcs and stuff like that in the

• 1:49:31

world and then we have this uh very much like if you've seen the maroon harvesting gear

• 1:49:37

that we've had in for like our november set this is like a green version of that that you'll see maybe on some npcs as

• 1:49:43

well and there's a couple things that i missed um i'm actually going to grab them we're going to do it live it's going to probably look weird but

• 1:49:51

do it live this the face of sorrow um we definitely had some folks wanting

• 1:49:56

to see the the particle effects so uh not completely finished but you know

• 1:50:02

it's coming together man not finished but important note here is you know we released uh

• 1:50:07

the earlier version of the um of the sorrow set and we got some good feedback uh about kind

• 1:50:13

of bringing it back in line with the original concept and um uh atkins i believe um and

• 1:50:20

i'm not sure i think it might have been danny took a pass on it and um we also had jim incorporate

• 1:50:26

some of the intended effects for the set uh so you guys can see that uh here yeah

• 1:50:32

and with that we are going to head on to qa q a because i know steven has to get going

- Q&A

• 1:50:38

but i'll play this video in the background we'll uh wechat i'm going to kind of move it towards some of the combat so

• 1:50:44

you can see that whilst we're chatting uh but i'll try to get through as many of these as you can and steven you just tell me when where

• 1:50:50

when you need to snip it um so our first one here is from alandriustiltgamer

• 1:50:57

and this is on the forums they want to know about death penalties how will incurred death

• 1:51:03

penalties particularly experienced at change at max level yeah so i mean

• 1:51:11

there's a few approaches to the to the death penalty with regards to at least experienced it right um when when you're when you're dying

• 1:51:19

and you're accruing this experience debt over time um it is going to to build up

• 1:51:24

essentially and it will take larger chunks of percentage at lower level and when you hit kind of

• 1:51:30

max level it's going to accrue i think at i think it's like three percent total level

• 1:51:36

uh or maybe it's two percent two percent total level but as we kind of run per death as we kind of run through

• 1:51:41

testing and and we we play with these numbers like right now the experience that in alpha is completely off mark we're gonna change

• 1:51:48

those things probably in the next week or two um and if we don't get it into a spot that we like you know we'll disable

• 1:51:53

at least for the test i would say but um it's it's it's a process right we go through testing we kind of see how these

• 1:51:59

things play out how they feel uh and we adjust it as necessary awesome

• 1:52:04

our next one is oh did you have something else to add no no no okay i think we can probably take um two more questions two more

• 1:52:11

all right the next question here the best ones oh that's gonna be okay ships cause i know people like to hear

• 1:52:17

about shift stuff uh pete nasty wants to know will ships have similar permissions structures to freeholds

• 1:52:23

where others can summon them if they uh if the owner of the ship is offline

• 1:52:28

no ships are are completely owned by the uh the person who um uh who has it in

• 1:52:35

their inventory um and they can only be summoned by that individual there are functions that exist on the ship that

• 1:52:42

you know players can participate in you can you can restrict those functions based on whether or not the players who

• 1:52:47

are attempting to access it are in your party or in your raid um such as weapons um anchors

• 1:52:53

uh utility items um you know the ability to access the helm

• 1:52:58

and and and navigate the ship um those things can be permissioned yes

• 1:53:04

all right and then our next question is from lashing about item sinks are there any involuntary

• 1:53:10

item sinks planned for gear since over-enchanting and deconstructing items

• 1:53:15

are both by player choice involuntary i'm sorry the first part of that was involuntary item sinks

• 1:53:23

planned for gear um yes there are if you're corrupt and you die

• 1:53:30

you can lose gear um and then um

• 1:53:37

like some some games have like repairing armor there's a yeah well i wouldn't necessarily consider it

• 1:53:42

per se a sink because you're not losing the item exactly even if even even if it

• 1:53:48

decays but the components necessary to repair the item aren't just going to be a simple gold sink like many of us have

• 1:53:55

experienced that becomes relatively irrelevant over time instead they're going to require some of

• 1:54:01

the base material components in order to repair and then additionally there might be added constraints and

• 1:54:06

having to have a crafter that either has the recipe to effectuate repairs on very unique items as well but as i

• 1:54:13

said we'll be testing that as well but i think that provides a again a necessary economic

• 1:54:22

uh demand for particular types of materials and components and that also feeds into

• 1:54:27

the deconstruction loop as well all right hopefully that answered your question uh buddy but

• 1:54:33

uh with that we are going to kind of wrap up our may development update thank you

• 1:54:39

so much for tuning in i know it was a longer one um and of course a reminder that the june cosmetics will be swapping over

• 1:54:47

we'll still have the alpha one pre-order package with that next set it'll just be a new cosmetics edit with

• 1:54:52

it on june 9th and then of course our next play test if you have alpha 1 axis

• 1:54:57

is june 2nd um you can see the pinned post on our support twitter that will give you

• 1:55:02

information on how to join or you might have gotten an email uh it's on the forums in a secret place as well

• 1:55:09

as well as on the discord uh so if you have alpha one access you should be able to get access to all of those places

• 1:55:14

and find the secret nda areas where we'll give you more information we try to keep you up to date

• 1:55:20

as much as possible and even with the server you know when they're going up and when they're going down so with that we made it through our may

• 1:55:27

development update do you guys have anything else you want to add um and of course thank you mcp

• 1:55:33

so much for joining us we really appreciate it thanks to everyone for for the awesome

• 1:55:38

testing absolutely love it i know people really wanted to hear kind of more that behind the scenes stuff

• 1:55:44

um and i hopefully hopefully they liked it even though steven's like this is kind of a boring topic

• 1:55:50

oh no no no no it was good all right all right well we'll see you later if

• 1:55:55

you are just tuning in now we will have this on our twitch as well as over on our youtube channel where you can relive the

• 1:56:01

action i will make sure that there are time stamps for you as well over on the youtube channel and we always put it up

• 1:56:07

on our news channel as well over on our website so anywhere you go we'll make sure that you know

• 1:56:13

that we're live uh and where we're at so follow us over on our youtube channel follow us

• 1:56:18

right here on twitch so you don't miss out on any future live streams and of course twitter and facebook and instagram if you're interested in more

• 1:56:24

day-to-day content and we'll see you next month for another development update thanks everybody we'll see you

• 1:56:30

soon toodles

• 1:56:44

[Music]