Talk:2021-09-29 BCG Discussion Round Episode 100

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[Music] greetings everybody and welcome back to the asheville creation discussion round episode number 100 we got steven here he's going to go off topic with us all over the place yeah he's so going off topic today um now that's become the theme so first up steven thank you for joining us it's been a privilege to do this podcast so we really do appreciate you being with us and yeah absolutely i'm very excited congratulations on a hundred episodes that's pretty crazy thank you we did our four-year anniversary a couple months ago and then yeah today's the 100th episode longest running ash secretion podcast exactly that is that is a feat i would say we just jump right into it how about how about that steven that sounds good okay so the first thing i'm going to ask you stephen is because i met you at gamescom 2018 and one of the things um that you always keep bringing up and one of the things you said really early on when i joined the community back in 2017 you wanna deliver the experience people our age we're about the same age had when we first started playing mmorpgs so yes what i think that's always the funny thing is like i think a lot of people go into game creation as a result of the nostalgia they have for the games they experienced when they were younger whether it be mmos or real-time strategies whatever it is a lot of developers i've noticed they always have this nostalgic memory of their experiences playing the games for the first time and that's something they want to bring back and so i you know i share that obviously with mmos okay so what like what is like if you if you say this what is like one of the key experiences that you wanna that you want new people to like new players people that never played any rpgs before before what is like the key experience you want them to experience that's a good there's so there's a few um i would say first and foremost something that's you know not entirely unique to mmos but this is pretty pretty core to the to the idea of what the mmo genre is is just being able to meet new people right is being able to be introduced into a community a social environment and just discover you know people that you would not have met before um as you become part of like guilds or you know a faction or you know walking into a dungeon and like looking for group you know like that whole lfg kind of mentality um that's probably my favorite aspect of mmos um but then you know there's there's obviously other nostalgic components it's like getting a rare drop off of a monster and like visibly seeing your power level increase because of that drop and like being the only person that got that drop that's a fun thing um you know having roles that are integral to experiencing content and being you know that specific role that people are looking for um and uh being able to provide that progression because you were able to fill a spot you know in a in a group of strangers um i think that's uh i think that's a pretty cool experience um being able to to complete you know something that no one's done before like downing a boss or finishing a dungeon or um you know going out there and and being the first to do something i think i think that's pretty cool too um you know these are all like elements of of mmos you know exploration just going out and fun being the first person to reach a mountaintop and look at a vista and post that you know like discovering hidden gems or easter eggs in the game that the developers placed secretly you know like those there's so much yeah absolutely there's there's so much in mmos uh that you know i've i have nostalgia over from the games i played originally yeah all right um staggerson how about you start us out with the other questions because we got a bunch of them we got a bunch of questions okay uh i was gonna ask about nodes um nice one thing that like has been a little bit unclear was what are the benefits that are unique to people who are assistant of a node and what will like other people miss out on yeah that's a that's a good question actually and it's a hot topic from a design perspective because obviously you know you want to have elements of of citizenship that are unique and that entitle the citizen because it is a choice you don't get to be a citizen everywhere and you have to kind of lay down roots so to speak within excusing sorry hopefully does that mute when i do that a little thing you couldn't hear me cough second time yeah nope okay muted okay cool um so you know you wanna you wanna be able to provide the unique aspect of of your choice uh because you can only be a citizen of one node so right now the there's obviously discussion about like all right certain services you must be a citizen to to interact with that service and those might be more delegated to service buildings right they might not be the generic or static services that come with a node when it levels but more along the lines of like the buildings that node intends to build there are limited functions and services that non-citizens can gain access to as a result obviously you want to attract traffic you want to attract commerce you want to track taxation that's possible because those are the means by which the node continues to grow and in order for that to be attractive you must offer it to non-citizens alike but then there's higher elements of that service like you know for example there may be merchant tables that only citizens have access to those merchant tables might relate to specific types of enhancement stones or you know specific type of stat migration abilities um you might have access to mundane crafting benches but the upper tier crafting benches are for citizens only um citizens only have access to the reliquary and the achievements that the node you know has from its citizens nearby areas and content like raid bosses that they might kill they may have a weekly allotment of what specific type of core material they can access from the reliquary and only citizens can do that but at the same time you might have added bonuses like for example many people might be able to partake in quests right we don't want to necessarily be super lockout on content per se so most quest lines are still going to be accessible from non-citizens and citizens alike however the reward tables for those quests might be higher for citizens right you may have additional rewards that be granted based on quest completion and progression um you know these are these are um you might have access to certain types of buffs that occur during like events and only citizens can have access to those types of buffs you know there are obviously going to be title structures within organizations within religions and stuff that relate to these events and procedures that citizens um you know only citizens can be part of that title structure for that specific node um you know those are those are the ways we're kind of thinking about making sure that citizenship is a relevant piece of your decision-making process and it has its own perks and rewards but at the same time it's still a community-driven you know component that players can be participating in you don't have to be lonely anymore at citizensonly.com is that the uh is that thefarmers.com nice i love that okay um another vlog to you farmers out there no just kidding another thing that's been talked about is like trade routes between nodes what benefits are actually unlocked by making a trade route with a node like yeah so it depends on the it depends on the trade right we're talking about like um from a diplomatic standpoint the ability for the mayor or citizens to set up npc routed trade routes between nodes as a trade agreement or as a diplomatic process those are important because um one of the things we're trying with from a design perspective is that nodes will have specific types of commodities right so commodities being unique to the sense of of that particular node or that node type there might be a selection of commodities that node types have available to those for example you know this node over here might have you know access to cotton as a resource and when that node processes that cotton it might be some you know very nice type of linen that only that node or very rarely nodes would have access to so when you initiate a trade route you know you're bringing its supplies that the mayor has requested because they're trying to build let's say a specific type of service building or they're trying to unlock a blueprint that they have access to now to build up their node and they have to bring in stone from other you know nearby nodes they may have partnerships with when that stone arrives as a payment back to that node they might get a specific amount of that node's commodity right and that commodity now is a material component cost of certain upgrades that the corresponding node has available to it now um alternatively you know establishing these trade routes help to progress that diplomacy and the benefits that citizens on each end of that node have um as a result of those successful trade routes um and those could be in the realm of uh quest lines they could be in the realm of resource management they could be in the realm of um you know defensive pacs there's a lot of different things that that establishing these diplomatic agreements um uh provide the node benefits with and each corresponding node that's participating in that type of arrangement okay um the node reliquary what happens to it now when a node is sieged to zero it becomes an available um spoil for the attackers um so you know the reliquary provides a house essentially for relics and the relics are embodiments of certain types of achievements right you may have the the the scale of a dragon that's been defeated the like uh the the all-scale aspect of it and from that every week you know a citizen might be able to derive you know one scale material component that can be used across a plethora of high-end types of crafting uh needed when the node is destroyed the reliquaries contents become available for uh for spoil amongst the attackers and now they even though they weren't citizens might have access um to uh that that um sorry about that might have access to that uh what they wouldn't have access to before if because they weren't a citizen they'll have access to grab a number of those instances of that material um and and that's going to be an important aspect because um relics are going to be uh important as part of the whole it's part of the whole crafting scheme right so this incentivizes is acts as an incentive for players to to want to engage and battle with these nodes and try to take what they have okay because i think yeah nevermind i remember before when the node just was de-leveled there was a different system so that's cool so you gotta take them back now um the i'm sorry the uh the it's not so much taking back to the note so the reliquary has let's say for example there is a dragon nearby and this dragon is a large raid boss and the number of citizens that the node has that participates in that raid the first time you know if you have 30 citizens present you may not achieve the relic right and it's not a matter of like capturing it at that location taking back to the city it'll automatically manifest within the reliquary if a number of citizens accomplish a particular achievement a number of times necessary to create the relic right so if you only have 30 citizens present at that rate boss you know you may need to do that raid boss four or five six times in order to unlock the achievement which grants the relic and the reliquary right so it's like uh it's it's essentially incentivizing the the citizens to participate in the world events around the node and that's a way to get them involved you know with what's going on outside of the node specifically and then when that becomes available then citizens obviously have access to it and then the other component of you know relics that's important to note is that it's not just adventuring relics these are accomplishments that span a lot of the different progression paths so you know you could have accomplishments get unlocked by how how many number of citizens achieve you know the creation of a particular type of item right you may have now an alchemical genius that is a citizen of your node and as a result there is an alchemical relic that's been granted to your reliquary um in a similar fashion to the to the dragon so the royal query is more like a achievement stockpile of its citizens correct that's correct what okay to add to that question what are you because you said something about when note gets destroyed and the winner of the siege how do they do they they get access to the relic right how does that system then work they get it you know they get essentially so what happens when the node gets destroyed is there will be stockpiles of of spoils so where the warehouse once was there will be a debris field and that can be interactable with there will be materials and gatherables that are present there as a result of what was previously warehoused within the node there will be a stockpile and [Music] and debris field around the reliquary that will be the access to the reliquary stockpile um there will be a town hall there might be some tax oriented certificates that can be uh looted that was kept within the vaults and the and the um in the treasury um at the stables you might have um you know what were once housed um mount certificates that can be added to caravans in the future or sold on the auction house that players can loot you know a whole host of what is centralized within a regional economy like the node system um becomes a portion of that becomes available to the to the attackers who participated in the siege and they can go and interact with those with those debris fields and um attempt to claim things oh nice nice okay okay uh oni do you want to go yeah and to be clear i do see um lyric lyrics and asks if neutrals can swoop in and take the loot so the looting rights have a period of time in which the attackers have um loot rights essentially so those these are people who participated in the attack they were flagged attackers during the during the siege um and they have first dibs and then if after that period of time uh similar to a monster you might kill right that uh that looting right dissipates then it becomes open for neutrals potentially could come scour the battlefield as well if there were remaining things uh but it's unlikely i would imagine can you imagine a big siege at the metro and then somebody comes in and ninja loots everything who would that ninja looter be i would you would be a very slow person he's better he's better he's better at watching our chat than we are [Laughter] all right uh yoni you up with questions uh do you have any thought on the aesthetic like that like the aesthetic of the toner might have right now um like ren kai are more asian themed the uh peer eye or native american the uh junior are supposed to have like a more um viking-esque theme yeah we have we have uh our influences for the toner um i'm not sure if we've announced them yet i probably would hold off on that until we actually start showing some of the the toner work but um again you know the idea behind the tolnar um was that they're a culmination of the leftover races right um not just the leftover major race populations but the leftover minor races as well and that's what gives them their attributes that are you know be steel or reptilian humanoid um and that players can you know use sliders to influence the visual representation of but in a similar fashion you know their cultural uh markers are also going to be a culmination of different influences um so they're very different very differently constructed culture than what is found in the other eight races so they're americans [Laughter] yes they have burgers and french fries just kidding uh with the character customization that you've explained so far uh do uh how far can you go with the characterization like can i make a lolly dwarf if i wanted to make a lolly dwarf could i make cat girl a cat girl tall nars by having the humanoid option and doing the sliders in just the right manner i so know you're gonna ask so in in the sense of what you would expect a lolly character or a cat girl character to look like no um you would not be able to create those things um can you create a feline or be steel influenced you know furs and you know snout or potential cropped ears something like that you might be you might have some agency over those things yes you could probably do some influences there but it's not going to look in the sense of a cat girl might at least what you're expecting from other games cat girls to be um it's going to be more realistic so yeah but if i wanted to do a lolly dwarf like just to pick the dwarf archetype and do the sliders in just the right way no there's going to be constraints to the sliders um so that was one of those you know big questions as work began on the um on the character creator you know how much agency do you want to allow you know pulling like the lower lip all the way down in this weird deformed look you know or you know having like a offset a cheek that's just asymmetrical to the side of the face you know like there's not going to be the ability or agency to create those types of weird character you know things however you will have you will have the ability to move slide change you know grow um decrease all all those components but they'll be kept in a more reasonable and presented way um in the same sense you won't be able to change the appearance of the dwarven nor the nakuen the dunyi or the nakuen races to in my opinion create what would be traditionally considered a lolly character uh okay well when it comes to the uh ash secretion uh races like we have a uh why did you pick the races that you did in the design choices that you did for the races like some of the animals some of the animals that we have in the world itself is very unique and stuff like that but for the races we have a very cut and dry like traditional rpg elf dwarf and like even one of the unique ones like the duneer not your stereotype of dwarf but like they're still in that art style of the stereotypical dwarf yeah i think there's something to i mean there's something to be said for innovation right i think innovating is a good thing i think um you know there are areas where you want to push what has been done before to you know something that hasn't been seen but there are also staple you know aspects of fantasy genre that i think a majority of players want to see in their experience and one of those i think is uh races you know players have through many stories and television shows or movies or games that they played have a pretty clear perspective of what an orc and a dwarf and an elf you know are meant to be in these fantasy settings and to some degree over time i feel and this is you know how i've been that they begin to associate with a particular race a traditional fantasy race in their characters that they generally tend to play now that obviously can can be unique to the game you're playing you know maybe you like the way an orc is and previously you played elves but you know this orc really does it for you and you want to play that org that's that's for sure a thing um but i didn't feel that it was necessary to recreate the wheel on races from a fantasy perspective um i'm not sure how much that would add to the flavor of the game um obviously i think that we're capable of doing unique things within the cultures and i think we are doing that specifically like an islander dwarf phrase i mean like that that really hasn't been seen before or like a stargazing noble vek kind of looking race right like you know those things are still unique and they still bring innovation to the idea of what these races can be uh but at the same time there's a familiarity there that players can feel comfortable with in the traditional fantasy setting so stephen i'm going to start you up with a um community question all right i'm going to go towards um classes so talents from the community he wants to know when are we going to hear more about the various archetypes um i would say you can expect to hear more about them probably over the next three months or so i would say that's good um any hint on which ones uh probably a lot of them actually i would say um you know obviously alpha 2 where we want to have all the archetypes available in addition to having um you know some of the classes uh from a secondary and augment perspective be available for alpha 2 um and you know as we're kind of nailing down some of the changes on the combat side and how that's going to reflect on like abilities and skill choices and stuff like that we're re-architecting what those archetypes look like from a active ability standpoint and a passive ability standpoint and as a result of that you're likely to see uh you know some some community-oriented uh information be doled out from um from margaret and from the community team um so i would say probably over the next three months or so okay so the next question is kind of similar to what yoni just asked in regards to the races but when it came to the creation of the the classes for Ashes of Creation why what made you decide on the classes and why did you name one class tank there was a question that was really pushed to us um so first part of the question is why did i decide on these eight archetypes um i felt they embodied an equilibrium between them the martial art and the arcane arts um i felt that these were tending to be the core class identities that have existed across mmorpgs from a fantasy perspective over time i mean each of them has their own player segment that people are interested in um you know summoners and and support kind of uh bard and the healer and mage you know those are all arcane elements that i think embody a lot of what we can do from a s from an active ability standpoint that people are traditionally accustomed to um you know rogue ranger fighter tank um those represent i think all of the martial elements of you know fighting classes that players like to see in fantasy games from a tank perspective why did i name the tank tank um there's a few reasons one one is that there are obviously elements of the tank roll that could be considered as different types of names like you know guardian or um steward or you know whatever there's things that you could do that but i i feel like tank as a vernacular has become embedded within mmo slash fantasy players and they use it interchangeably even if the class name was like guardian or whatever i feel even though in that scenario players would still refer to it as a tank like in normal conversation with each other oh we need a tank for this fight you know we need no i don't i've never seen in games where the tank obviously was called something else i've never seen my guild or other players refer to we need a you know that name it's always we need to tank you know what i mean and um i felt that it was a an okay portrayal of what that role is um and you know i didn't have as much of a qualm from why that would be called a tank in game per se i think that there somebody did a great write-up actually it was so funny i was reading this the other the like last month or the month four of like why it's okay in a fantasy setting for the word tank to be used to describe a particular archetype and they were talking about like how tankards existed and those tankards were you know strong and capable of carrying the liquids inside and like this could be you know referred to as a tank class because they're essentially a giant tanker holding a bunch of blood instead of ale you know but it's like it was like this is a great explanation um you know i have had some pushback even internally from my own team from my own designers about the the term tank and i have said to them that i'm open potentially to thinking of other names for it if it's something that is you know a a difficult thing to to jump over um and i know i've seen the community on multiple occasions say that they don't like the name tank um but uh you know i'm not gonna make any promises so um i get you know it's it's something i didn't have a problem with but i mean i mean some people didn't i do understand like your your train of thought when it comes to naming the the class tank because sooner or later people are going to call the class tank anyways in game so oh yeah people are asking for dps or healer they're not going to be asking for a ball like specifically like they might be specifically asking for this and this exactly right but in regards to melee classes one of the other questions that i have for you is when it comes to the differences between midi classes how does the fighter fit in between the rogue and the tank i know the tank is more towards cc and damage negation how does the fighter fit in in that whole setup between rogue and tank well the fighter is really a mobile physical dps right so they're able to traverse the battlefield they're able to close the gap quickly they're able to deal damage from a physical perspective um you know they have but doesn't have the rogue do the same thing well the rogue is more physical disable oriented like applying bleeds or snares or having precision damage that's situational being stealthy um you know that's that's kind of how i view the the rogue role whereas the fighter is like in your face you know you try to get away from me i'm going to close that gap you know i'm going to i'm going to deal this burst damage to you um and it really doesn't matter if i'm behind you or if you're bleeding or if i've snared you per se like i am there i am in your face i'm doing this damage um whereas the rogue's like uh you don't see me you know i'm coming in and boom i stab you in the back and i do extra damage because of it now you're bleeding and you're trying to snare away and walking away and like you know that's that's kind of a rogue in my opinion versus a fighter okay cool um let's see uh staggers on you up okay augment um how many augments can be applied to one ability from any sorry any uh you can have you can have one active augment on an ability at a given time okay that was in the past and then recently it was changed to like sound like class augments and maybe you could add race augments on top of that um no you'll have different sources for augments so your secondary class will provide you with four potential augments um you might have an additional augment that's available from like religious progression uh and you might have an additional augment available from like a racial uh perspective we're still kind of discussing those things but even if you did have that would just be a greater variety of options and then you would have one applicable at a given time okay uh will some augments be locked to certain abilities like um you can only apply like one of this this racial augment to like a buff ability or something like that um it's possible um that is something that we you know started discussing as we've been approaching implementing the augment system for alpha 2. it is possible that we might delegate specific types of those additional augments to certain skills only however the secondary class arguments should be across all active skills so the four schools of augmentation provided by your secondary class choice those are going to be present across all active skills and if we did do something along those lines it would be delegated only to like racial or you know specific uh religious augments do you have any examples of racial augments yeah um let me think so well maybe i shouldn't because that's not in stone yet and by stone i mean that's not just don't say anything to get margaret mad like no i don't know you know nothing tomorrow you know you know how the community's gonna be stephen said stephen said season yeah i know let me uh i'll pass on that one because there's a few ideas and they're radically different um and we haven't we haven't we're still gonna have to prototype them and i think test probably with both scenarios um and then land on an option once we've done that that's fair okay would i get the same answer for religious augments yeah one for that okay uh for crafting uh we know armor can break and will require resources to fix is there a similar like resource sync for mounts um there is a resourcing for mounts and that's in regard to like um either their health or if they if they die essentially um not the timed ones but like your normal amounts if they die there will be uh material sinks if you want to hasten their ability to come to be available again for use um so in that sense like you'll be required to provide you know some type of pet resurrection like potion or something that can come from the alchemical or the alchemy profession or um you know if they die a certain number of times they may have a debuff on them as well within a set period that would require a different type of material component to use so the idea is yes there's some sinks that can improve the return rate of that mount or the performance of that mount if they've died multiple times okay not in the same sense that gear has uh degradation because the degradation uh you know the decay on gear um that persists until you put material components back into it and if you allow it to get to certain stages or to get to a destructed stage then it requires a lot of material components uh in order to return back to its back to its accents former glory um for instance content instance first open world content i'm wondering how like the rewards are structured and like will interact with each other or not um like what will i get from farming instances if i farm instances why will i go into the open world sure those kind of questions yeah instances are really not intended to be like you know grinding or farming areas these are these are more utilized to contain this the encounter right if if design has a specific reason for which you know they want you to only be able to encounter this area with eight players you know or to only do this boss with eight players um either from a story perspective a class progression perspective you know racial storyline you know whatever that's where we delegate a majority of the instance used to not necessarily for places that you can farm or grind repeatedly so these are specific story arcs that we want to give containment to the encounter around um but yeah okay uh i think yeah that's that's the answer um i have a question from army asking uh can you give some uh specifics on how open world dungeons are going to work sure but yeah explain exactly what he means because it's the boss rooms i'm not sure exactly what they mean that was the question we have i assume they mean like yeah how when you reach the bosses in dungeons um can you be jumped is there times there'll be instance and or people will be locked out of it um for the most part if there are bosses at the end of dungeons um it is possible for you to get jump but i'll kind of explain you know what the intent there is so back in the day circa 2003 uh i was playing lineage right and this is one of the main experiences that i had about open dungeons as a concept in mmorpgs actually i guess that's not entirely true they were open it's funny enough there were like open dungeons back in 1992 with neverwinter nights on aol as well like i would walk in and they'd be fighting like some dracolich or whatever and i'm like oh i'm here i want to help i'm seven years old what do i do you know but anyways no in lineage two like i'll give you an example there was this great dungeon back uh when i played lineage 2 it's called antherius lair or dragon valley cave dvc i think it was and um you know you like entered this dungeon and like around the beginning the opening rooms of this dungeon you know you'd walk in there was a main corridor you could turn left or right you could go forward if you turned right you knew that's gonna take you down to like the donut area the python pit and like you know you'd eventually have this bridge you'd go over and you'd enter into uh and theris's lair which was the giant boss that you could teleport at you after you got to the heart and um it was always cool because like you know when i would go in there with a party and stuff you know and we'd be fighting like the the early rooms they were like little lower level right um lower level monsters and then as you went deeper you get higher level monsters until you got really more difficult monsters so you kind of had like a a an ecosystem of players that were present in this open dungeon it wasn't you know this is like if if i was lower level and i was in the opening rooms and i saw like this party run by and i'd be like oh that's the archer on that server that was like killing a bunch of people at the last castle siege it's like what's up man and you get to say hi to them or whatever and they like run by go to their little spot and they're like don't talk to me pleb you know or whatever you know like that interaction of just having people co-mingle in an area of an open dungeon is a i think a cool experience right um so that's why i like the open aspect of it uh but additionally as you're like running through you know you could go straight and you could like exist under the little bridge and if a raid came through and they were going to go to the boss you'd have an opportunity to be like oh i want to you know i want to join in on that even though i'm not necessarily part of the raid like group do you want to leave our hunting ground and just go see what's going on and like experience this fight together like yeah you know let's go do that you know we can experience that and then if you had rivals that were like no we want to stop them well then what you'd have to do as the raid who was trying to complete the boss is you would try to secretly organize together at some location nearby so it wasn't like seen by other people and they could like shout it out or tell the enemy alliance or whatever and then you'd run in all together and try to get there before the opposing team has time to get together unless they like spies or something right and then by the time they're like trying to run down the dungeon like they're training all the mobs and they're like dying left and right some of their party members are dying they have to like resurrect them and it's like this little it's a rush to like how how can they reach you and start interfering with your fight potentially so that you don't down the the boss and they have a time to get their alliance together to try to compete with us then for this boss you know that that whole interaction i think is just a set it is a it is a unique risk to boss engagements um and i think that that can be a very fun and compelling um encounter because you know not all not only are you competing with the you know the curated and constructed encounter by the design team and by the game you're also now introducing a human element through your adversaries that exist within you know that are trying to compete with you um so open dungeons yes there will be some open dungeons that have bosses at the end of the dungeons there will be some open dungeons that just have a multitude of like you know dungeon bosses not necessarily world raids or something um and there will be lots of different rooms and they'll be progressive in the sense that you know in the earlier parts of the dungeon they'll be lower level and then at the later parts of the dungeons deeper down they'll be higher level uh and more difficult and that creates again i think an ecosystem of where players across a multitude of levels have an opportunity to coexist within certain areas of the world and that's good from a social dynamic it's good from a recruitment dynamic it's good from a you know just a liveliness and relevance of particular areas so that you don't end up with these locations that you know once you pass a certain level like it's empty you know so to speak um yeah so none of the open world dungeons or raids they're gonna have bathrooms that get locked as soon as somebody starts the encounter there might there might be a couple of those um but for the most part i would say no all right okay good staggerson you got any more questions uh i think that was it i was gonna pass it on to yoni all right do you want you up okay uh weapons when do you think we will be able to equip weapons in our rained weapon slot what what um yeah brain's weapon slot um so right now the idea is and this is something that actually is is open to change by the design team as we're going through the um as we have been going through the reflections on alpha one and what changes we might want to incorporate in these pitch phases how the range slot interacts with your main and offhand slots the idea is that you will have a range equipment slot that can be that can have the ranged weapon in it while you have your main and offhand slots as well so you could have a sword and shield and you could have your bow or you know um whatever the range weapon is equipped to your back essentially and as you commit a skill that might have a range component to it like let's say you use powershot you click powershot you quickly swipe over switch over to the um to the ranged weapon execute the skill and you're back to your primary focus right which is the the sword and shield and then for weapon attacks like your q or your left mouse button um you would have the option to to set which is your focus the ranged weapon or the main offhand selection and you can swap back and forth between that as you want necessarily that's currently the intended interaction for ranged weapon slot and made offhand slot and what that does is it alleviates you know obviously the inconvenience of having to hot swap on a hot bar let's say weapons between skill usages because we want there to be a variety of skill selection available across certain classes and i think especially with the augment system and how that can fundamentally change an active skills ability and how it functions uh you want that type of of um ease of gameplay so that's the current that's a current thinking on ranged versus main offhand uh going back to range i guess uh will we get any a longer range free aim weapons uh like we had in apoc uh able to snipe players from long distances that is a good question um we say yes obviously obviously one of the problems with that is going to be the size of engagements that we're intending to have right so when you think about like um you know what we were able to achieve with alpha one well i think one siege we had about 350 people um and you know ran well um from a server's perspective standpoint um and we just recently done some optimization on you know getting above a thousand rendered um players on screen uh with some okay fps and we'll continue to push that further when you have skills that have really far distance capabilities what that means is you need to be able to draw characters at that very far distance as well right so if we have let's say a 200 meter capable skill like uh you know some projectile um and you have a thousand players on screen we have to do some aggressive you know calling algorithms to draw down the number of players you're going to see at any given time most of that's going to be proximity based right so if we're if we want if outside of a thousand player engagement you know if you're capable of seeing players at 300 meters great but when you get into the 500 or the you know the multiple hundreds of players we have to bring that down because we don't want the server to have to calculate and replicate across all players everything within 300 meters because when you do that that's when the server starts to have some problems um so we have to kind of dial in what the net relevancy is of um of of actors or characters during these high density engagements and that's one of the ways we we allow for those types of battles at that size to occur on us on the server um so the reason i'm explaining that is because as we determine what types of skills and abilities we're going to have if we have those very long distance skills that needs to be taken into consideration for those large and high density engagements and it's difficult for us to to make those two things jive with one another very well so it's it's it's probably unlikely that you're going to see in a similar way to what we had in apoc with like a long bow or the short bow that type of distance traveled i think in apoc we had a 250 meter cut off um for uh for the long bows you could really get a long shot you had to leave the target it had some drop on the projectile no how far was it best part of all day park oh i know no no i it is it was a fun thing and that's usually delegated in my opinion to um you know to these uh to those more um okay those smaller engagement types of games let me ask you this because um anzu tv just asked this and this just gives me an idea something similar will there be arguments for certain classes that might increase the range on certain skills oh yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah i mean augments can affect a multitude of things it can drastically change the ability itself it can change the damage type it can change the cooldown period it can change the damage values it can change the distance it can dramatically change it from a ranged effect to a melee effect you know augments augments are essentially can create i mean they are creating entirely new skills um but they're going to keep obviously some identity with what that primary active ability was in the first i just disconnected why did i just disconnect looks like it yeah sorry my bad that's okay are we still alive yeah we're still alive it looks like we know the cameras are there none of the cameras ever worse oh there we go hello all right so who's that yoni you're up next time yep stop slap yourself sorry uh we have been given an example of weapon progression when uh where it might add stat effects to weapon to weapon attacks which can synergize with your abilities but how else can weapon progression affect your play style uh can you change attack animations is i guess attacked on one of their um uh can you change no so your attack animations with your weapon are actually a mechanic that's going to be associated with the weapon skill tree so this is something that i spoke about i think on stream maybe i don't remember but um let's say for example you're using a um you know a two-handed warhammer or something right and you have a number of weapon combos that play animation style based on how many combos deep you go into an attack with that warhammer so the first is going to be like a forward swing second is going to be a back swing the third is going to be you know swing down and the fourth is going to be some you know twirl that you do right and that's that's the what we call the combo animation montage right the way that the weapon skill tree works is that at different stages of that combat montage you have available procs that can occur right the first swing might be you know a small stagger that decreases your opponent's you know accuracy by 15 that could be a proc that you could that you could spec into that decrease in accuracy you know might be a status condition called um stagger or bewildered or whatever and that might exist for three or four seconds right um your second option from a skill tree perspective might be on the swing back you know you have some type of some type of tapering slow effect that lasts over three seconds right some type of tapering snare and then the third slap you know strike down might be some potential one second stun status modifier and each of these you can spec into additional points to like increase the chance that these proc you know what i mean um the relevance of that is that depending on what your class skill choice has been those are going to have synergy effects with the weapon skill tree so like my skill called you know spin to win might do 30 additional damage on a um on a uh staggered target so i see when my proc occurs with the stagger effect on my first swing like me for me as a player i might be only interested in landing that first swing so every now and then i'm gonna i'm gonna swing once and then i'm gonna use a skill and then i'm gonna come back and swing again because that'll play my first swing montage because it's been interrupted so i won't move to the second one because i'm really only i really just wanna hit that you know stagger effect um so that's going to be how my rotation lines up however i might have some skill that you know on a stun target it might be an immediate cast and it's like some power you know power push or power hit um and that does you know uh it knocks back a stun target so if the target's stunned when this skill plays um it has an added effect of knock down and now they're gonna get knocked down for an additional two seconds now i might spec into that and as a result i want to finish through you know swing swing and then knock down so i get my my chance at stunning that target with that weapon skill right um you may have items or set bonuses that change at what level those proc occurs so i may have a full set of you know you know battle armor that changes all third hit combo procs to second hit requirements and now i have a chance not only on my second hit to land that tapering slow but i also have a chance to land my one second stun proc because i have the full set that changes my weapon progression so that's the way itemization works with your weapon skill tree is you can enhance when those weapon skill trees become available in your in your combat montage and and that can be a relevant factor in how your skill rotations come to play and mixes with your weapon attacks and why it might be relevant right now some people might just say i don't care at all about my weapon attacks like i'm not going to invest a lot of points into that you know and if i do it's going to be primarily like pve focused where i'm more comfortable using you know just kind of swinging my weapon and i may not use them as much in pvp i'm just going to be focused on you know skill rotations that's okay but the reason for those skill montages back to your question is they have a very relevant role in when certain procs come online from a weapons skill tree perspective gotcha we don't have a whole lot of time left but i do want to get this last question in before i pass it on to someone else maybe one more question um how do you plan on balancing armor types uh why uh why should we wear one type over the other like inside arcades you have light armor does magic defense and gives you some buffs for this medium armor it gives you like a mix between heavy and armor heavy and uh plus it does gives you this buff for going two-handed i don't remember what the buff was and then our heavy armor gives you more physical defense but and then inside games like new world like other games through this too but like in games like new world it affects your dodge roll and like so wearing one's more to the other yeah no no that makes sense um so there's a few things um certain armor types are going to have certain type of um predominant stat values right so there's going to be certain waterfall stats and or certain primary attributes that are available on certain armor types and then if you want to have the one that's not more prominently available you know those will be rare to get you'll have to elicit the services of a of a crafter who's very you know capable within that particular type of armor in order to get the non-traditional stats and or waterfalls available so there's still the ability to to to get whatever on these but they're going to have a more um they're going to be more predetermined for certain types of stats and waterfalls additionally there'll be certain types of set bonuses granted across specific full sets or partial sets of armor types there will be a similar function in how damage is mitigated based on the type of armor you're wearing and how that relates to physical or magical incoming damage so that's something to keep in mind it's going to be situational what type of adversarial foe am i facing and what armor is the best against that to mitigate damage um on top of that you're going to have um you're going to have certain strengths and weaknesses of armor sets and those can be specked into by your opponents um you know for example you know um i might place some type of elemental enhancements on my weapon that uh you know horizontally changes my outgoing damage and that's going to reflect based on the opponent on my target opponent and what type of armor they have available to them to counter that um you know armors armors also uh are going to be relevant um based on you know knowing which so like as as you can target a player you're going to see you know what type of armor they have based on a buff they have available to them because obviously cosmetics can change appearance right you might have different silhouettes as a result of that so we want to communicate that information across buff so you're still going to get the information even though cosmetics are present and players can transmog stuff that's an important component of it um but uh we have thought of the idea of you know obviously we're playing a little bit with the idea of these universal skill sets such as dodge parry block active blocking stuff like that and progression within those areas there is something to be said i think for incorporating itemization choice as part of that system as well and how it might affect that system that's something that i think is is going to be coming up in the pitch phase here shortly from design um as we implement those universal skills um so you can look out in the future for more information on that nice gotcha um okay steven we only have here for one hour so i think uh we only have time for two more questions three minutes sure all right so the one question actually was one of the yoni's but i'm just going to ask it now is um we don't have gun powder so what sort of ranged weapons will ships have uh okay this is a probably gonna be i haven't i haven't spoken about this in the past but um there was a particular weapon that was pretty unique in apoc and if anybody can remember what that weapon was yes maybe a p launcher a potion launcher right now i want you to take that weapon that you held and shot potions from and reloaded and i want you to think of it on a bigger scale perhaps on the sides of ships and instead of these gunpowder related cannons having giant potion launching cannons that don't necessarily use gunpowder but use some magical alchemical substance to launch that potion okay um that's that's the idea behind cannons and ashes i know we haven't ever announced this before and i guess that's a revelation but um the potion launcher idea will be incorporated as part of how cannons operate on ships um and these will be very large potion launchers obviously you know the storage of this ammunitions are going to be very important as well um but you know the idea i had for that potion launcher actually um back you know a long time ago uh i don't know however many people saw like um neverwinter or excuse me um never ending story two but there was this there was the little uh little potions that were like the memories of sebastian that would come out and like dial down and the woman would pick it up and she'd be like oh yes i'm like taking this memory from you but i really loved the visual of that potion machine right and so to the original like um uh i think it was jeff delier who um concepted out the original potion monster those are one of the reference images i was like i want it to be transparent you can kind of see into the potion chamber itself and see multiple potions that are present there in a similar fashion you know that cannon will also have some transparency in what potions are available but also the really cool thing is that it's not just going to be the same cannonball every time it's not going to be the same potion every time you can equip the cannon with different types of potions that have different types of effects from a munitions standpoint um and i think that's going to that's going to provide a very cool gameplay because as you see the different color of the trail that's coming out of the potion launched you'll be aware of what your adversary is using and how that affects your ship and you'll be able to counter based on maneuverability based on whatever you want to counter that with um i think that's going to present a very interesting dynamic to the to the uh to the attacks with these ships okay so then let me add on that question and then we're gonna i think we're gonna call it quits when are we gonna see this so i think um alpha two we have planned um i think having three ship classes uh online and what that means is obviously you know we have to do a lot of the work on the buoyancy and ship physics and the projectiles and all that kind of stuff but for alpha 2 we are intending to have ships in the game and i think we're targeting three class types uh personal group and and um um uh capital or raid raids type type ships um they will have cannons and you know they the cannons will be operational so there will also be some utility um slots there and defensive slots um but it's like not likely that the ui and the interface for how to swap those components out and craft those components individually will be present in alpha 2 but the ships will be at least okay so um i don't even know if i should ask that last question but i think i'm just going to ask it alpha 2 what's in store for us in regards to you know between now and how long did you see me yet [Laughter] live as long as you need stephen as long as you're as long as you want if you want to go off topic go right ahead [Laughter] there is a there is a lot planned for alpha i mean alpha 2 is intending to be obviously a very large chunk of the game's mechanics a very very big percentage of it so um you know there's a lot in store whether it's you know showing all the archetypes having some of the secondary class options available the augmentation system nodes progressing up to higher stages like city potentially metropolis having actual sieges present in the real sense having a lot of the open world and some of the content that's going to be implemented the naval warfare systems the auction house the um freehold system you know there's a crop rotation the climate system and there's a lot there's a lot of stuff that's going to be in alpha 2. um so you know that we definitely have our work cut out for us right i mean this is a lot of work that we're intending to bring online and and you know previously i'd said there's going to be a longer period where you know what we're showing and what we're talking we'll be showing stuff as they come online but you know there's going to be some some time between alpha 1 and alpha 2 because there's so much we want to have present in alpha 2 i mean that that is going to be the phase before beta so in that sense you know it has to have pretty much uh very large amount of the game complete um yeah all right then stephen first up um we really appreciate that you were on here today but yeah i have to ask one last final question and this is more for the older people in the community because i just saw it pop up in chat and when are we gonna get node part three um meaning the last question the same same response i've given over the last years since node two um confusing nodes three will probably be around the end of alpha two i would say um and again just to reiterate and i've said it before the node series are i think uh obviously nodes are a big mechanic in Ashes of Creation they're the biggest mechanic that we are constructing they're tied into everything they're probably the most unique component of what Ashes of Creation is trying to be um and in that sense you know i consider those to be very big marketing points um for the game gotcha and so you know from a marketing perspective as you can see and as everybody in the community sees as we go from milestone to milestone you know things visually just get better right we have more assets to lean on we have more refined aspects of our character um of our character models we have more refined aspects of our props and architectures and all that kind of stuff and biomes and everything right so we want to save the big marketing beats and how you know nodes are presented nodes being nodes three right um for when we have a a much more you know mature visual representation of the game um and in that sense that's why i would say it's probably gonna be around alpha two nodes three has become such a meme now yeah i love it yeah but i don't think anyone remembers that it's supposed to be a four-part state so this is the north node four after that yeah there's networks that's four yeah yeah four parts nodes four will probably be the you know the big obviously culmination and crescendo that would happen probably around beta and a beta like just before launch is like nodes for going comprehensively over everything node series has been you know the big like you know crescendo of the project of from a marketing perspective of like this is why ashes is different this is why every you know mmo that's come before that says tell your story or dynamic events isn't anywhere near what nodes brings to mmorpg experiences right um so we want to make sure that that's that that's it is a very special uh score would you think about remaking one and two since it's been so so long well i just dropped it give update graphics to it and yeah i've i've talked about that in the past as uh actually with our marketing team about potentially uh prior to nodes three re-releasing one and two uh because that was a long time ago and you know you look back at that and it's actually cool because you get to see where the projects come to based on like alpha one and stuff but um at the same time it's like those were big hits amongst the community and kind of understanding the the concept of what the core gameplay of ashes is intended to be um and it would be cool to kind of to revisit that and update it visually and even even as we redefined some of the systems incorporating that as part of the explanation as well i agree all right well we've taken up an hour of your life you're never going to get back so exactly so again stephen thanks for joining us absolutely i enjoyed it it's very fun i like of course i i love discussing all things ashes related it's always fun to discuss it with fellow gamers you guys have been doing this now 100 episodes so big props to you guys that's a lot of dedication a lot of time on your end and i think you know you guys have fun discussions you guys you know you don't necessarily stay on the railroad per se and that's always fun because a lot of content creators do they're very methodical in their presentation that's a good thing not a bad thing but it's always fun to be a little bit loose and to discuss things kind of fluidly and yeah we're pretty good at that again stephen thanks for joining us everybody thanks for watching uh we appreciate it and we will do our best to do another 100 episodes righty four years see you four years down the line with episode 200 exactly episode 204 take care everybody bye everyone [Music]