Talk:2021-06-13 Live AMA with Steven Sharif

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[Music] hello everyone and welcome to a special live stream with Ashes of Creation i am joined by my guest mr protobear himself the head moderator of the mmorpg subreddit how you doing buddy i'm doing great thanks for uh hosting us and thanks for participating in this cma with us absolutely i'm i'm really excited i love amas i love discussions about mmos i love discussions about ashes and when you invited me to um you know to do this ama i was i was excited i was excited to see you know just the questions obviously that come in and having a chance to chat with you people outside of the traditional you know ashes community and what questions you know they might have oh yeah absolutely i was i was very curious about myself to see what questions the the subreddit would come up with yeah yeah i see we have a we have quite a nice list of uh oh yeah yeah i saw it it was like i don't know but i saw there was like almost 700 comments yeah the past few days you act you know you were really close because i remember we were on discord and i was like you know i bet you after the first day there was like 500 i said there might be like a thousand comments you're like yeah i think there'll be about 750 and you were definitely much closer i think this the post itself lands in the top three most commented on uh so far but it doesn't officially let us check that so i'd like manually sort through a bunch of them this week to see where it landed hopefully that wasn't too much work i mean i was it was to satiate my own curiosity so uh it was worth it in my opinion very cool well i know we have a limited amount of time i'm down to um to jump into it and just to give a preface obviously for those of you who are joining from the Ashes of Creation community um you may see some repeat questions here and that's okay we're we're an uh guest in the mmorpg subreddit community um so we're going to be asking the most upvoted questions uh from that thread um that was there for the last few days so just bear that in mind so i'm excited marnick if you want to take it away absolutely the first question actually is not the most upvoted one but i think it was a good icebreaker hexanoo asks how is your day stephen my day is good um i had a hamburger just a few minutes ago i scarfed it down real quick because uh margaret was telling me i needed to get on zoom and she said you better eat that sandwich real fast um but no actually i i'm doing much better i don't know those of you guys who follow maybe um on twitter on my twitter i've kind of showed uh these ducks these wild ducks that landed a few months ago in my pool and i've been like training them to like eat and come to the door and like knock on the window for food and stuff and they had babies actually uh little ducklings 11 of them a couple of days ago they showed back up into the pool and i got a little house for them and some like straw and whatever and two days ago i was super depressed because the babies were missing and the mother showed up and was like quacking and whatnot and i thought the babies had all been eaten because they were these three falcons that were flying above the house and they were like dive bombing and i was like no the babies are dying and in slack in the company i was like guys i have some bad news like the babies i think are all dead and then yesterday at like eight o'clock at night the mother showed up with the babies in the pool and i was like oh my gosh thank you lord the ducks are fine so i'm doing much better today than i was yesterday the day before because i was super depressed well yeah i can imagine well good to hear the ducks are fine then yes well then the official first question comes from talents who asks what is your idea for a direction you'd like to take combat and what are some of the big combat changes you want to test and implement in the near future ooh that's a good question um you know from the from the onset my my goal with combat was to have a hybrid between tab and action and obviously that's a difficult thing to acquire because tab and action have very different paces very different tempos um traditionally in the in the different games there's been some games have come along and tried to kind of merge the two right through a hybrid system but i didn't feel that you know those really kind of capture the essence of both i feel they either leaned towards one or the other and just had the alternate as an option so to speak so we're really dialing down especially during this alpha um on how we can substantially represent both types of modes so the direction you know the changes that we're kind of making right now are really um you know tab is relatively easy to kind of implement i think everybody has a traditional expectation of what tab you know means and they understand that action and as an action combat as an interaction with tab there's like i said there's been a few ways that this has been done previously what we're trying to do right now is really play with the way that that mode that reticle mode kind of interacts the type of um control schema that's present the ease of being able to swap back and forth uh incorporating tab as a portion of that action mode as well um you know these are these are kind of the things that were that we're playing with right now in alpha the testers are kind of seeing each week new systems come online with the action combat camera and the action combat skills and the idea is that players get to you know kind of drive what skills they're going to select through their skill tree uh whether that be more heavily action oriented or more tab oriented so there's kind of a combination right now of hit scan and projectile based skills as well as templated targeting skills that are present in alpha and we're collecting all that data as players participate in that and you know we'll be iterating on it it's going to be it's it's a big thing to nail down combat is obviously one of the most important aspects of playing at mmorpg because it is the most frequently you know hands-on system that players are part of really um and it's very tactile so uh you know you want to make sure that it feels good and that's something that that we are focusing on 100 yeah i agree with that like there's so many mmos out there where combats almost you know feels like an effort thought it's like oh yeah like the rest of the game like the content is fun but then like the combat itself is kind of lackluster for sure so it's it's absolutely like it's great to hear that uh you guys are taking a combat like first approach gameplay design yeah even early on you know some even you know long before we approach kind of this alpha one we were playing with combat from an action perspective right to collect data and you know it is it is a difficult thing to to address because you want to have this this this duality that's present within the game um and uh you know i've often said like this is something that we have to get right not just from like an input sensory perspective where like you do the audio good and you do the visual effects good but like from a character response time like you know needs to be snapping very you know quickly and sometimes a lot of unreal games that you play people say you know you kind of feel floaty in that regard and so we've done a lot of changes with regards to like character movement and animations for those things and we're kind of playing with split body attacks and full root motion type of attacks um you know because there's a balance between weighty floatiness and like two weighted where you're like restricted character movement and nobody wants to be super restricted in their character movement as you're a part of a large raidview raid or you know some giant uh um uh encounter so there's there's a lot of things we're playing with yeah last thing you want is very slow combat when there's like a million things on screen going on and do that to that same extent uh i've i've definitely heard people say oh i don't want to play that game because the combat feels too floaty oh yeah so yeah that's that's uh i mean thank you for that uh the second one it comes from falcus who asks will the bart class be more like the dnd support archetype or more like the old abarth stale all-rounded fighter with supportive capabilities that's a good question um so the bard class is intended not to be a pure support right with so that means like yes they're going to have rounded kind of skills that you can spec into that are offensive and defensive um court you know sort of that jack of all trades approach but at the same time like one of their primary components is their support abilities and the way we want to introduce bard support abilities is to make them very proximity and um positional kind of dependent so one of the ideas we've been playing with actually um one of our programmers alexi uh thought of this was um you know as you lay down a templated um skill that's some type of support skill whether that augments your party's attacks or defenses or gives them you know critical bonuses whatever that there might be included as part of that some uh position spots that are indicated as part of the template effects and if your party or raid move into that type of formation you get an added benefit or added buff for a period of time that persists so you can move into that formation and then move out of that formation and the buff will persist because you hit that formation lock um so that's that's one of the interesting things we're going to try with the bart class but yeah to answer the question um it's it's probably going to be more heavily on the support side with obviously still having rounded fighting uh capabilities and other offensive and defensive stuff i mean it sounds like a really unique system and like with everything i'm looking forward to you know playing it absolutely yeah no i think i think it'll be cool i mean a lot of times in the other games i played bards it's like uh you know they always kind of come down to this oh you're a musical oriented class right you have like an instrument or you know your skills have this like musical component but i've always said like you know traditionally bards haven't always been musicians right you know they can be writers they can be storytellers they can be you know different different aspects there so i think the the bard is going to have a little bit of a more um you know way traditional look back at what they were originally kind of looked at as in d um and that's going to be something that's going to be i think cool for players to experience yeah like one of my uh moderators is actually super hyped about the fact that there actually is going to be a bart class because many animals these days seem to like omit that so um they're gonna agree i agree the question three comes from like hurt me i would rather not with usernames um do you have any plans to create an ost for certain individual bosses like your own theme oh absolutely yeah that's an easy one um yeah i mean it depends obviously on the boss we have a lot of you know lore behind uh who some of the primary antagonists in the story are um and those are definitely going to have you know custom soundtracks essentially to to identify that boss right and that and that's not just going to be about the boss per se it's also going to be about the area of the encounter you know where is this boss found why is that boss there um and i think that the this you know soundtrack is going to incorporate elements of either intrigue or mystery or horror you know that's part of as you're winding through that level to get to that boss it's building up to a crescendo of the fight right that's uh you know music is such an important part of like of setting the scene the emotional presence of like what you're doing in this immersive world it elicits some emotional responses and we um you know we have a a great composer uh bear mccreary who um you know has worked on god of war on battle star galactica on um outlander black sails you know a lot of a lot of great great franchises a lot of great ips um and i think he's he's gonna do an awesome job in capturing the essence of of what that emotional response should be from a player yeah most people don't understand like i know a lot of people that play muted but then will go into final fantasy where they have like very strong boss music and suddenly like four boss fighters turn that up instantly so i think like i think like soundtracks are just a really important aspect for a lot of people um another question from like a combat perspective from lord sigmund 415 uh can you tell us your plans on how the summer seminar will interact with the other archetypes based on the class name so you can assume some things but i think you all want to know more yeah i think the you know the great thing about our class system right is that we have these primary roles that those are the archetypes right so you have eight archetypes that exist and those roles each have you know some semblance to the holy trinity in the way class structures exist and when you incorporate the secondary class to kind of excuse the secondary archetype to create the class so to speak you're incorporating elements of that role from an augment perspective on the main active skills of your primary archetype so we think about a summoner a seminar has a few directions to take well obviously you know summoners tend to um to you know portray their power through their pets that they summon right and that's what we all accustomed to traditionally so our summoners they'll be able to summon pets those pets will remain permanently within the world until they're killed right and they have to resummon them so to speak um and the role that that pet takes is kind of up to the summoner they can take a more traditional tank role a more traditional support role or a more traditional dps role and they're going to have control over that when they you know determine what skill points they're allocating to certain types of summons and how they're augmenting those summons to and those augments will change the appearance of those summons you know you have necromancer that might be summoning undead and as opposed to you know the more traditional archetype pets um so you know the summoner's really going to have a direction on what role they play in the party they're going to be very versatile because they get to direct how they summon you know that that additional um that additional pet um so in that regard it's going to be up to the player uh they're going to have the opportunity to be very versatile and play you know multiple roles as a part of a party you uh you mentioned earlier that you know it's definitely accrued in the holy thing yeah the holy trinity of tank dps and healer um i'm just personally wondering like why how like why did you go with that specific system holy trinity mm-hmm there's like a lot of conversation all the time that's happening about like why this why not something else why not try to reinvent the wheel sure yeah i think that you know just from a pure game philosophy standpoint i think that there's things that mmorpg gamers are accustomed to in the traditional wheelhouse of what we come to expect from playing an mmorpg and some of those you know i don't want to use the word like sacred cow right because because sometimes designers you know they don't want to have those present right and and i think though that when you're creating an mmorpg there are certain systems that don't need to be reinvented and i think that the holy trinity does a very good job of of defining specific roles that you can cater your design around um whether it be from an encounter standpoint whether it be from a balancing of rate versus rate or party first party or 1v1s i think it presents a very good rock paper scissors type of dynamic to where there's never going to be a pure meta of like what the top class is so to speak there's always going to be something that counters that class because you're adhering to this rock paper scissors type of dynamic um and the other thing is that we already have some pretty innovative systems right the node system is a very innovative system um you know we did reinvent the traditional wheel of how content is surface to the player with with nodes right and i think that you know you want to give an anchor that players can look at and say okay this is what i know like this this is familiar to me and that lets them experience the innovative systems as well and and part of that obviously the class systems i personally i i loved i i mean i love in rpgs that that uh that uh holy trinity so that's why i decided to go with it i mean that makes perfect sense right like it's something not only people expect but also a lot of what people think of as mmos and the gameplay associated with it this fits very neatly into that package yes um oh yeah i mean speaking about i mean i've seen you know it's funny actually just to comment on that even further [Music] there are games that obviously approach the holy trinity and you know throw it out and go with something that's like you know your class is kind of defined by your weapon or your class is defined by um you know other things and i think you know my hat's off to them i think it's cool to innovate in that area it's just like i said you know we decided not to to innovate on the traditional class structure and stick with the strip of the holy trinity i think a lot of people are actually pretty grateful for that because i mean there's an entire conversation to be able to be had about like traditional mmos what people prefer but you know i think the the gameplay question uh leads pretty well into the next one where ash one one asks uh any announcements as to who will replace jeffrey bard not yet um we'll probably be making that announcement i would say after alpha one so look for that i would say probably around august time frame okay yeah thanks then that was a pretty short question um the next one and i love this username glorious dj dj ping penguin asks how extensive will gambling be diverse games or gambling halls and will it be done with gold or an alternative currency specifically for gambling that is a good question so there's a few approaches we want to take with regards to to gambling um one it's it's we're thinking about having a um secondary currency that's utilized in the tavern uh games and that those have the ability to make unique uh purchases for cosmetics that are offered through a the secondary mark the secondary currency market right so you can kind of achieve um you know when you play with other players your score maybe there's like a ladder system with these tavern games and you get you get points at the end of each month you know that that contribute to you getting that currency um depending on how well you place as part of those tavern games um that's one thought the other thought is you know keep it traditional where you can allow players to um you know bid with their actual currency in the game um and they can win that way there's some current concerns about that um but you know i think the the the idea behind the tavern games is to create another social interface right this is where like players who are loving the rp aspect of mmorpgs um you know they want to walk into a tavern and they want to meet new people and kind of play games um i think that's a i think that's a cool idea i i you know i loved it when we first thought of it four or five years ago um and we have some some fun ideas and ready to go with what types of games we're gonna offer having like race specific games that are gonna be available having unique games that can be acquired as well through like adventuring in the world and then now if a person acquired that game they can set up the table in the tavern shop and another person can join like there's i think there's a lot of fun stuff to play with that i think you hit on something like very specific and interesting where you said like specific games for specific places things you can find out in the world uh it's like that variation in the world yes i personally uh that's so interesting because that means that one city is definitely like it serves different purposes and different needs right so yeah like oh like yeah let's meet up in the game what are we going to do oh that oh for that we need to go to that city or that place like exactly that makes the world feel larger than it actually is in my opinion um then i personally do wonder can i bet on fights [Music] that's a good question um i don't know we do have a fighting mechanic that's uh i mean obviously we have arenas uh but we also have a unique um component of the military node types where their election method is through fighting and that fighting might be uh between players but it also might be between champions the champions that the players acquire and then kit out over the month election period to participate in those fights we did think about uh early on having a betting platform for players to predict who the winners of those might be um there's obviously a concern there that it can be gamed but um i i don't dislike that idea i mean that's going to be the case with literally every system exactly absolutely absolutely if there's a system there's going to be people that will find a way to abuse it of course yeah yes at least at least we did the next question question seven uh doneki fam asks will it be difficult content that is made for the more hardcore fanbase for a challenging experience and perhaps cosmetic rewards yeah absolutely um you know we talked a little bit about this in the past and obviously those of you who haven't had an opportunity to check out our wiki um there is a great community ran wiki by lex one of our community members um and you know it has a lot of information on this but you know from a from a difficulty standpoint and with regards to content right um you know obviously there's a scale there where players exist between you know um players who can achieve and want to achieve much more difficult content and and see that content um um you know being able to kind of react to their capabilities um and that's one component of you know dungeoning um you know going on raids uh that we're going to be incorporating as part of some custom ai solutions on how um you know ai will react to players who are performing better than what's expected right and that might you know ai exists within this kind of like behavior tree of available skills and actions that you know a monster or raid boss or whatever can can react with and some of those some of those behavior trees might activate depending on players progress through an encounter and that can that can represent either maybe um you know a much higher frequency of aoe abilities depending on how many people are participating it could uh you know unlock specific type of like rage and and recovery effects and buffs that the monster might do it might incorporate you know additional ads and additional ad classes you know there's a lot of different things that we want to incorporate as part of like the reaction of the world to the player and how that player is capable of of kind of addressing content um that i think is going to be interesting i'm really happy to hear this not just linearly scaling health right because that's boring i mean i personally hate that type of scaling as a player because it it just seems so irrelevant you know it's like oh let me slap on more hit points to this monster you know i mean okay well wait how did he get more hit points like if it's strategic and tactical and it's something that's behind you know that's part of its behaviors then that to me as a player makes more sense like okay i have incorporated an additional threat level to this monster and it is reaching deep down in its strategic repertoire so to speak of actions that it can take and it's reacting to that like that to me feels better yeah you absolutely need some form of like scaling because like you want it to be possible at multiple um group sizes those not trivial at higher ones yes yeah i think that's i think that's actually pretty good because nobody likes like a design where it's like oh you will take five minutes to kill this boss regardless if you're with like five or two hundred and you'll all be doing the same things regardless yes yeah that i think that's i think it's a pretty good school system um then next question might be very emblematic of the subreddit as a whole but the false adhesiveness five asks do you worry that people will end up feeling disappointed in ashes due to overhype or is that just par for the course that's a good question um you know my thoughts on hype is that there's a very fine line between hyping a game and being excited for a game um you know what i view hyping is where you are setting unrealistic expectations um prior to a game's release like you know this is going to be the savior of all mmorpgs or this is you know going to be the i'm going to lose years of my life to this thing or you know stuff like that i think like you know people first of all i would never dare to tell a person how they should feel about something so like if if that's the way you want to feel like by all means you know i'm going to try my best our team is going to try our best to live up to those expectations but i think what we do with ashes is every month we have a live stream every month we show progress every month we we communicate with players on our discord on our forums on twitter or on you know every social medium possible and we try to answer questions and we try to you know just keep people a part of that process and and i think that's what excites people who are a part of our community because i think that type of interaction you know you can find it here and there amongst you know traditionally indie developers uh more so than the aaa companies but and that's not a dig at triple a companies i'm not you know i'm not trying to dick at them per se but um i think that that's what excites people and you know we've had our fair share of criticism i mean back in 2017 on mmorpg subreddit itself right the sea of salt has definitely come to our our shores many times so so like you know that that happens and that's okay i think it's a it's a counterbalance to people's excitement anytime you have excitement go up you're gonna have salt go up as well and that's just there's a parody there that has to be you know the god of salt must be entertained um so i'm gonna use that now so so i think that's okay i think what we have to really focus on as a community especially you know i'm kind of i guess i would talk to the mmorpg subreddit community specifically an mmorpg enthusiast out there gamers fellow gamers who love mmos is if we want companies and we want individuals to spearhead change in the industry or to innovate in the industry we must be supportive vocally supportive of the changes we want to see right and as consumers we really only have one power and that's the power of the wallet so i actively tell people do not support Ashes of Creation with monetary purchases do not pre-order the game we don't need that money to finish Ashes of Creation if you want to support ashes by all means we have those available and we we love and respect the players that do choose to do that but if you're skeptical at all just sit back but sit back and watch and give feedback and and express the things that you agree with from a game design philosophy standpoint from a monetization standpoint from a artistic standpoint from you know whatever it is that you can talk about that resonates with you as a player talk about those things but don't go out and [ __ ] on games because they're trying something new because at the end of the day behind the screen are you know 100 developers at at you know Intrepid Studios these are real people human beings that are spending you know a lot of time night and day working on a project because they want to create something that makes people proud um and it can be demotivating if you you know read nonsensical statements but i would say hype hype can be getting back to the question hype can be um a dangerous thing uh because you can set expectations above and beyond what's even attainable not what the if we did a 10 out of you know i saw this video uh last month or i think it was a month or two ago um by uh uh i looked like rob stark honestly but i don't think it was him um but uh the video was basically like you can this game can be a 10 out of 10 but if you over hype it for yourself it's gonna feel like a seven out of ten or six out of ten um so i would say like identify the concepts in a project that excites you that you want to see innovated in the industry and take that take that excitement you have and vocalize it through messaging form boards reddits discord be part of the streams and follow that and if you're not a person who has the patience to follow game development because a lot of us don't right when i was a player i didn't um so a lot of us don't have that patience if if that patience doesn't exist for you sit back you know look at other things go play other games and come back when the game's ready like that's that's my thoughts on that yeah you can definitely be found uh like on the subreddit from time to time like responding to player feedback i think it's very admirable that you open up this development process for people to like not only just look at it also like give feedback into oh yeah because yeah like the development is very iterative and it's very slow and i think as like gamers want you know they want things now and they want to give it now i want it now yeah so i i think there's definitely something to be said for that um i'm gonna go to the next question because we're only 30 minutes in otherwise people are going to go from my head um malicious 03 asks can you share or tell us anything new about the new develop about the development of the orc races particularly the feck dying to know what they'll look like in game we've had we definitely released some um concept art with the orc races one of the things excuse me one of the things that's key about these races um is that you know as we go through development and we answer questions with regards to kind of like our pipeline of development and you know um we discover things from our alpha from the data we collect you know we want to make sure we don't jump ahead ourselves in getting these races uh developed if we have to go back and change something that we discovered during alpha right so right now we're presenting um both of the human races we're presenting one of the elven races representing one of the dwarven races the orc races you're probably not going to see until later in the year and you know once you do see them though you know we will have begun pretty aggressively production on all of the races at that phase um so i would say look for near the end of the year you know what those orc races are going to look like um and then you know i think i think one of the cool things about you know the orcs is that there's a strong disparity between the two visuals um you have these like traditional big buffy orc that are the renkai uh and then you also you know you have these kind of more goblinoid goblin-esque looking vec that really there's a strong change in the in the animation stance of the character models in addition to the changes between the character model meshes right so they're going to be very different between the two of them um and i think that's going to be a cool component that we don't traditionally see in other mmorpgs i noticed that like from the races in Ashes of Creation all like relatively humanoids was that from uh like ease of development standpoint that it's more from uh it's really more from a lore i mean obviously yes there is a there is a component there um you know that you want to be able to so one of the things that's that's that's interesting about i loved lineage too i'm a bit i was a huge lineage 2 player and i did like how they kind of did their um uh their equipment and itemization um and you know all all races can wear all armors and they're gonna have a different visual appearance on the race that dawns the armor even if it's the same type of armor it's going to share the thematic components it'll share the color you know palette and but it's going to have a you know an orc is going to don orc looking armor even if it's the same type of armor that a human might wear they're going to look different between the two um so you know to answer that question really it was primarily lore driven but there's obviously some saves that you make on the character and animation side when you get to share pieces across multiple uh races yes absolutely absolutely like at the end of the day it is still like about like an indie project i would say like a triple a project but an indie project and the the more you can yeah absolutely i mean on aspects like that the more you can invest in others right and and now to be clear and for those again who haven't you know researched uh the itemization principles of ashes like you will be able to mix and match pieces right there's a eight-piece armor set you can mix and match across different types of armor sets or whatever there'll be set bonuses though so you'll want to try to be cognizant of that as you acquire items um but yeah i know you know to what you're saying even any mmo that's going to be effective in creating as diverse a a game as we're aiming to create and as you know ours is mmos in and of themselves are difficult projects ours is a particularly ambitious one so we do have to find um you know ways that we can effectively create this world that doesn't kill us in the process or just is unattainable so to speak so yes we're an independent developer meaning you know we don't have a we don't have a publisher um and um you know we're we aren't a traditional aaa studio but you know we have we have a budget that's that's relatively close to what a triple a mmrpg would come to expect um and you know we're using a very powerful engine unreal engine is a is a beautiful engine from a graphical fidelity standpoint and i think people can see in the quality of the videos we've been releasing over the last couple of months like our aim is to be a very triple-a product um and and i think that we will attain that um with relative ease because all of our developers have a background from aaa companies as well so so um you know that's that's that's helpful uh but yeah no it's it's a big project mmos are big projects you got to find the gains where you can yeah absolutely i like development there's always scope management right um question 10 is from nibbles cookies nibbles like oh nipples cookies okay uh how will you stop big mafia guilts from owning all the good dungeons and world bosses by camping them that is the bane of every probably open world um mmorpg um so you know our split between open world and instancing is 80 20 right 80 open world 20 instancing however our world is very large um so i would say it's going to be a quite a difficult task for any type of quote-unquote big mafia guild uh to to overtake all of those uh good dungeons and world bosses by camping them um what i mean we do some traditional things with regards to like you know having variant time windows on the on the world bosses um you know we have uh dungeons that open up based on like node progression so those can change every now and then um you know we have kind of guild size limitations but honestly the the the real answer to that is going to be what what traditionally happens is in a non-faction based game where politics drive player interaction we have many pseudo-factions many many kind of you know fake factions that we drive players through you know um gently nudging them to be part of communities and those communities exist from a social organization standpoint whether it be like thieves guild and scholars academies you're going to share chats with people who are part of those we have religion systems you're going to choose religion and have shared chat with those you're going to have a citizenship and share share affiliation with the node that you're a part of you're going to have guild structures you're going to have families so there's many pseudo factions that exist even though we're a non-faction-based game and you have the kind of ease to determine oh do i want to be a part of this or do i want to be part of something else and i think any time you have a mafia guild at least the mmos i've played um typically servers with a mafia guild evolve into a two-faction-based thing right you have the mafia and you have everyone else so to speak and that can change with the winds of politics with the winds of player intrigue right over time you have betrayals in the mafia guild and they splinter off into two groups and join the other side or you know it's like weird things that it can occur in that regard so i think that that's the important way that that will solve itself i don't think the developer necessarily has to step in there and say no let's railroad this politics or let's hand hold this you know aspect i think that any time you have a bullet you're going to have a counter bully and that's something that we try to encourage um you know as part of the the politics process i think like with every game that has such systems you don't want to put a break on the on the amount of fun you're allowed to have oh i see my camera froze oh did you freeze uh my camera apparently did oh no i see it as well of course yeah it's in the best possible um it might come back in a second oh no that's funny okay i actually oh oh wait that's all right no we've got many colors okay then oh there you're back welcome welcome to the backup camera oh you had a backup camera that is actually that's good i don't have a backup camera i have my phone that's pretty much it okay yeah i mean i was using a dslr as a previous camera because it looks better and this one kind of wants to be wonky sometimes oh yeah uh okay well as i was saying um the like you have like eve online where you have like these big corporations yeah corporations and like you have drama happening you have like backstabbing and you have like infiltrators that go in like this band these massive like groups of people that comes with its own drama but it's nonetheless if you play that game or not reading those stories is one of the most fun things i can imagine actually oh for sure yeah and as long as as long as the world is okay so one of the things that i think will naturally combat the the risk that comes with one mega corp or one mega guild kind of owning the server so to speak and killing off competition is that ashes is constantly changing right so the way that nodes spawn and despawn and can be destroyed and the castles exist to exert pressure and these world events you know they they pop up like it's a massive world and it's constantly changing those two things naturally combat the opportunity for mega guilds to claw control over a particular server um because the more opportunity there is for divergent gameplay often areas that you know are changing from a from a uh from a development standpoint because players develop the world the more difficult it is to wrangle control over those things right and the higher the difficulty the less likely a guild is going to have both the numbers and the organizational skill to accomplish what they want in that regard i mean can it happen yeah anything i guess could happen in that regard um but it's going to be much more difficult than it would be i think in other mmos and you know at the end of the day like any mmo is an evolving game so it's not that it's a perfectly static system that will never change again um i am a little bit lost okay yeah so then the next question um is from vman gman21 what is your opinion on expansions making all previous content content obsolete and effectively reducing the amount of meaningful content as opposed to expanding it yeah i definitely seen that in other mmos i played um one of the key aspects of ashes that i think combats this concern um is all of the systems in some way shape or form are are integrated with each other and they all use as a as a conduit to be exposed in the from a content perspective in the game world the node system right um so you know as we think of expansions and how we're going to introduce additional uh content essentially we're thinking of how we can introduce that content through the node system so whether that be a new area of the map or that be new points of interest you know all of those are going to relate in some way shape or form to the nodes and players as citizens utilize these nodes for many of many of the services that you would need across the spectrum of systems that we incorporate into the game so since that's our primary objective on how to introduce new content i think that's going to keep relevant um the existing previous content that players are still going to need to interact with whether it be from an artisanship standpoint in their gathering processing and crafting whether that be through their adventuring class whether that be through treasure finding or social organizations you know all of those things are still going to remain relevant alongside the new content that gets introduced the other thing that i would say that's interesting is that you know traditionally i found in mmorpgs that one of the biggest things mmos suffer from is new player acquisition you know mmos tend to do very well at launch from a momentum perspective and they can if they're a good game they retain the players and they're good at retention but when it comes to acquiring new players what typically happens is as players enter into an mmo world they're entering into these barren starting areas right and there's nobody present there because the game population on a particular server has moved on to other areas the way that i've designed the node system to try to combat that is that traditionally you will find on a new server that the nodes closest to the starting areas will tend to develop first and fastest because that's where the gaming population heat source is right players enter into the world parenting in from these starting locations as those nodes advance until they get sieged and destroyed and paved the way for new content they will lock out nearby nodes from advancing beyond them and they'll put them into this kind of parent vassal state that brings players back to those nodes because they're citizens there they have housing there they have content that arcs out into the points of interest in the world and so you know four months into a server you may have a metropolis that spawned near the starting area and it's a big hub of traffic so that as new players enter into the world they're entering into this massive hub of player activity and the biggest selling point of mmos in my opinion is the social aspect and so what other mmos have experienced when you enter into these empty empty areas is people are like okay i'm doing this old content i'm trying to level up and i have nobody around me i have no guilds i can talk to no friends i can you know meet up with i'm just here out here in this barren wasteland of a starting zone and that is a real problem because you lose out on that social component but having the node system in place and keeping that as a major funnel of activity uh gets to introduce those new players then we have systems that kind of complement that you know we have we're gonna have quest components and mentorship programs that kind of incentivize players to interact with those new players get them involved into those organizations that are part of the part of the node system and get them introduced into the social climate of the of the server they're a part of i can definitely see that like i uh it's always a shame that when you get into like an already existing mmo and indeed like there's all this like great content and like content people have loved before but it's just irrelevant now so yes you just you just skip it to you know get to the end game or in like the case of some other games there's so much content that people are so so like all the content is technically like relevant but not in a great way um well i think the other thing about that is um i think it also comes down to the general just game philosophy right risk versus reward and and spending time to get somewhere um that content will be relevant in a few ways um obviously it's going to be relevant because even as a low-level player going through that content you're contributing to node progression you're contin you're contributing to the world's development you're acquiring resources and materials that work in a very foundational way with how the artisanship system is is developed right you're able to deconstruct items that you get and get unique components from the deconstruction so you can play a part in the economy you can join and participate in community focused quest lines that are relevant from a religion and from a social organization standpoint and from a node organization so you become a citizen early you become part of those organizations they're going to give you activities that are up to date with the current political climate of the world right because they relate to neighboring nodes activities so even if you're a low-level player or a brand new player and you're doing this kind of content you're still going to have access even at a low level to participate in certain quest lines that effectuate change in the world and can also uh um uh inhibit or aid a neighboring node's development so like there's still there's still avenues in which players who are new even if the pop even if the core population of a server has moved on to a later level or they're still going to have relevance as part of that process as well um i hear what you're saying though like players who join a game like if if the player population has moved on to you know level 60 or level 70 or whatever right some arbitrary level number and you're a level five player you know you don't want to have to go nobody wants to have to go through the process of leveling to that level but as part of our ideals as a game we're not going to give boosts away we're not going to you know auto level up a character you know you have to spend time acclimating yourself to what this game is to what the world that you're part of is and that's an investment a time investment and that plays towards our ideas of risk versus reward and i've always said like our game's not going to be for everybody and that's okay like you know it's it doesn't have to be there is a large enough population of gamers out there who are interested in this type of game where players have to invest time or have to invest you know smart smart game play uh in order to achieve a particular reward the relevant that every like you can contribute an influence at that level is definitely like interesting yeah uh move on to the next question lightwood asks a similar question to question 10. how can you ensure that open world pvp will not eventually make the game unplayable for small guilds and individuals we have we have a very good deterrent into open world pvp from a pk standpoint right so i divine i i excuse me i um i define open world pvp through our flagging system and you have a non-combatant state you have a combatant state and you have a corrupt state the combatant state is when two combatants are they're fighting each other right they're they're they're flagging against each other they become purple right and at the end of that fight you know you don't get any corruption if you kill a purple player but if you kill a person who's not participating in combat who is just standing there you pk them play or kill them you're going to gain corruption corruption is a very very negative bad thing to have you can lose your you can use your lose your completed gear you take like four times the normal death penalty you accrue debt xp at a much faster rate you start to decline in your pvp efficacy right so your skills start getting modifiers that decrease their effectiveness um you know that's just gonna pro that just to be frank and this will have to be tested and people will experience this and through the testing and and i'm open to making sure that my what my goal with the flagging system which is to deter outright pking on a frequent basis will work you know we can amend some of these things but the idea is that like if it's a moment of passion if it's like a moment of pure opportunity and you're willing to take the risk you can pk another player but it's not going to be something that can be done repeatedly and and by a large group of players there's a bounty hunter system that's a that's a cat and mouse type game where bounty hunters will constantly see the location on the map of red players of corrupt players go out and hunt them take their gear from them so it's like this is going to be something that is it is a strong deterrent for we have a lot of opt-in systems that players can participate in whether that be castle sieges node sieges guild wars um you know node alliances and wars like arena systems these are things that uh caravan system these are things that players can opt into if they want to participate in pvp and and i think that's a that's a good way to go because again those systems all have risk versus reward as well and there's a you know there's a major benefit for people to want to participate in that but if you don't that's not your thing then that's fine but there needs to be an element of risk that exists in the open world and the reason for that is because from an economic standpoint there are core pieces of our economy that relate to the traversal of goods across regions and this is how you build up and you make those um those legendary items and you you move those goods across and you are able to establish this crafting empire that's that's significant but it needs to have an element of risk to it um and and that's that's a component of the game that's very important you for that uh the next one might be the longest question we have from tiberius 2068 we've heard a lot about the pvp side of the game and we know that 80 of the world is supposed to be contestable so what will ash of creation be able to offer ppe focused players that does not involve pvp as a pve focus player myself i enjoyed wow rates and dungeons i'm curious to see if ash of creation will have something to offer players like me pvp and guild politics are quite boring after a while that was a mouthful that's good um again i would i would reiterate here those of you guys who who haven't had an opportunity to research a lot about ash's immigration definitely check out the ashes of creation wiki research this stuff we have a lot of plans in place for compelling dungeons and for fun raid events for heavy emphasis on on crafting and resource gathering um you know we have expressed probably this more amount about those systems than we have about the pvp side of the game when it comes to the open world and that kind of uh of 80 world being supposed to be contestable it's not that 80 percent of the world is supposed to be contestable it's that in my experience in mmos they have gone heavily down this kind of single player experience this this curated very enclosed um uh instanced type of experiences and that removes the element of playing with in a massive world with massive multiplayer components right like i want to run through a dungeon and meet somebody along the way in a group that i never met before i like you know chat with them hey what's going on how are you guys doing like your party went down you know let me move my room over and come and raise your party and form that friendship and like now we've done something together as opposed to just like all right i got my core group i got my constant party we're just gonna go run our cycle of instance dungeons and never meet anybody outside of our party like that to me is boring the the emphasis in Ashes of Creation is this very high level of social interaction this encouragement to meet other players to play with other people imagine that in an mmo to do those things like it's almost like that doesn't exist anymore or something i don't know but like the open world aspect is not so that it's meant to be contested everywhere yes that is a component that is a risk that is how passions flare and emotions fly like yes that can happen but what's going to probably happen more often is you're going to meet people you never knew before who might live halfway across the world right and and that's the thing that always excited me about mmorpgs like when i when i started playing mmos i was seven years old right it was 1992. i was playing neverwinters nights on aol when it was six dollars by the hour to play an mmo um and it was it was a fun experience because i met people at that age maybe i shouldn't have met those people i don't know but like i met people who were you know stranger danger i'm in danger no like like maybe that is uh maybe that is something that got lost on this new generation so um just something to think about the idea behind the open world isn't to create you know contestable areas it's to put you in an environment with other people with a massive amount of other people because that's what makes mmos mmos oh yeah absolutely i think it's these like stories you come like you make for yourself in this world that eventually make up part of the fun um i think this is going to be in the last question from breakfast libertarian each metropolis has a sorry each metropolis note has a superpower for instance scientific notes allow teleportation between parent nodes and any of its vassal nodes for its citizens can you tell us any of the other node type superpowers um you know the the only problem with that is that the superpowers might change for the other notes like if i say it here you know i'm gonna be i'm gonna be held to to that so to speak um now what i will say is is some of the some of the other things that you know we've been thinking about um is with let's say the divine note for example we've we've thought about um incorporating a structure of catacomb-based dungeons that are like ultra difficult almost iron man mode type um that come with the super that's essentially the superpower of the divine node um you know just to kind of give a little tidbit there that might change so don't hold me to it uh but the idea is that you know if you're able to build up these the the super power excuse me the metropolis of a divine node um it unlocks a mega catacomb kind of dungeon under it and then those dungeon connects to that dungeon would connect to other divine nodes that are in its vassal um and those divine nodes might have unique bosses unique drop reward tables um and it's something that is um is going to essentially kind of change and and uh be procedurally built as well so it can be different across uh the different um the different divine nodes well it all sounds very interesting um we have about one minute left i'm going to quickly squeeze in on the last question nice because i do think it's a it's a good one uh you said before say minecrafter 338 asks you said before ashes of creation is not for everyone can you please describe what we cannot expect from the game i think you can safely not expect that this is going to be a trophy for everybody game um i think that that is is there's plenty out there on the market who rewards you know you logged in congratulations here's your trophy oh you walked a few steps and you made it to the next point wow look at you you know like that i don't think that's going to be the mentality of the game i don't think anyone has ever been interested in that congratulations he's reached level five i played i'm not even going to name the game i'm not going to name the game but i played a game that was a new mmo and all you had to do was click a button on the right hand of your screen and it would run your character auto path you from quest to quest and you wish i was i was like what all right i'm gonna go get a drink i'll be back in a little bit let me know my quest is finished it's like come on you know i i think that uh i think that at the end of the day there's an entire generation of gamers who have never experienced what it's like to play a difficult mmo and to to to feel that sense of accomplishment for work done to have something that is introducing you to you know large number of players from a persistent world perspective get you integrated into a guild like there's a whole generation of fortnite players and and minecraft players out there who especially on the minecraft they've like touched the surface of what an mmo can be but they've never felt the mmos that many of us as mmo communities have felt you know 10 15 20 years ago in our nostalgia of that first love experience um so like i'm not i'm not saying necessarily like well let me just say this that our aim is to kind of bring back that that feeling we had and it's a difficult thing to do but that's our aim um you know we want to we want to get back to to what made mmos a great experience and um uh yeah i think i spoke on that enough well um i think that's it for our time for today i want to thank you again and your team for uh participating with us in the in this email i will also thank like my own moderators for you know keeping an eye on the thread so yeah yeah absolutely i loved it thank you by the way big thanks to the mmorpg subreddit that community for coming and showing out the number of responses and questions that you guys had was overwhelming and and marnick proto bear sorry uh proto bear i really really appreciate you uh you know representing that community that obviously you guys have done a great job over there and cultivating i think a large a large salt mine um and they've been they have been on their best behavior i know this one and it's honest to god surprises me no i love it it's always fun but but thank but thanks for thanks for coming out and and participating this i think it was a great event yeah again anytime all right well with that being said thank you to the audience thank you to the Ashes of Creation community thank you to the mmorpg subreddit community we've enjoyed you guys coming and participating i hope you guys enjoyed it we love you all we love the mmorpg genre and we are going to do our best to bring you guys the game you can be proud of so we will see you guys in the future bye everybody [Music] so [Music]