Talk:2022-02-25 Livestream

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0:00 Intro

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation february development update we hope that you are all well and safe today i am joined by of course our one and only creative director stephen sharif and we have a new face with us brian langford who is our executive producer and celebrating his three-year anniversary today yes hey everybody it works how are you welcome brian thank you it's nice to be here first uh first life is going to say a long time listener first time caller [Laughter] i can't believe this lined up perfectly for your three-year anniversary at the studio i know it's it's amazing so i'm honored to be here thanks for having me on yeah yeah i think i really i think that people are going to have a fun time kind of listening in on the aspect of development that is production right and how much of uh how much of a pivotal role you and the production team play in the process so i think the audience is going to be pretty excited to hear from you cool yeah and and can we show puppers he also [Music] she's sleeping he's like leave me alone yeah funny story about luna is i don't remember when did we do our game-a-thon brian where we were doing some some d d some pathfinder sessions and then oh yeah that was back in november oh yeah back in november right we were playing some we were playing some pathfinder and brian brought luna over and she just had this spot in in my chair in my couch where she loved laying on her back and she would like fall asleep with her paws up like this and she'd be dreaming and her paws would be like kicking every down it was pretty that's her yeah it was foreign well we'll get the show on the road here as steven had mentioned we will have a new segment today um but we will be covering our quick reminders we have our studio update reminder uh update production design and engineering and environment art as well as character art and we have something kind of new to show you on the character art side um and then we also have our q a as per usual but before we get started with our reminders steven wanted to set some expectations for today yes i did want to give an update i know last uh stream i had spoken about us showing off some of the character creator uh just to give you guys a heads up early on in the show that that will not be this uh this today's uh presentation um that still needs a little bit more time in the oven um the team is doing a great job so far updates wise i saw a little bit of a preview of that um yesterday and last week it is coming together it's looking really good but we want to make sure that you know when we show off work in

3:19 Reminders

progress that it is in a presentable state right um even though we are transparent development you know we do have to be conscientious of first-time viewers and people who aren't as up-to-date or following you know religiously the project so they see something and they walk away with an impression that might be oh that's the final product um so there is some element of that that we have to take into account even though we do show work in progress we do show things that are you know not yet complete we always want to make sure that they're in a presentable format um and that still needs a little bit of work so um revealing something that no one has ever seen before today that is true so yes little consolation we have a lot of cool stuff and we're also going to be talking about something a little bit more in-depth that we haven't really talked about as it were we'll give you we'll give you a hint that it is a character race that you have not seen yet uh yes the final the the final version of its face and and whatnot so um it is one of the elves we'll say that we don't know which one now you're teasing like you're giving too much away that's too much because everyone was thinking tolnar and now they're like well now way to go stephen i'm sorry maybe you maybe you won't have to wait as long but we'll see i know all right i'll get right away to the quick updates and we'll we'll get the show on the road so first and foremost uh we have our unbreakable bond set that we'll be swapping over on march 9th 2022 at 11am pacific for the new one so if you're interested in this awesome set definitely go get it it's very dwarven um the junior presence in this is very strong and i'm excited to see people utilizing these ones they're going to be fun and then beyond that we also did instead of like a dev discussion this time around we actually showed off some new races uh as well or what we revealed some new races and race models as well as some updated models for you guys last live stream so that was the vec the nikua junior renkai and klr models a majority of those male models other than the junior female and we did ask you all for your feedback so there are a whole bunch of forum threads available to you all i think that there's one on the news or the announcement section that links to all of those so super easy to find please give us your feedback they've already been making some adjustments and changes based on your feedback and you're actually going to see some of those changes today so you know we are taking everything to heart we're keeping in mind the sliders that you guys want and things like that so definitely go over there toss us your feedback we super duper appreciate it and we may have some more threads to add to our collection after today's stream beyond that uh just a reminder that we do have our content creator program applications open so if you are a content creator you're interested in that and content creation does not just mean videos and streamers that could be your fan or you know a fan site you create fan creations you're a cosplayer

06:22 Studio Update

whatever it may be feel free to apply to that program we aren't closing applications yet but when we do we will let you guys know and we'll let you know when we're starting to invite people into the program with that i think we're going to swap over to our studio update i know sorry no bingo card for you guys it was a quick one um so uh steven take it away with the studio update yes absolutely things have been going great over the month of february actually um luckily enough uh this live stream actually is happening at the end of the month instead of the middle of the month as we did in uh in december november so i give you a little bit more of an update on the hiring front we have been doing a great job our hr team with uh stacy midori uh cameron have really been stepping up to the plate uh with regards to recruitment um we've had a considerable amount of hires over the start of this year between january and february i think we've hired about um 11 or 12 people i think actually so it's been pretty nice some of those new hires you're going to be probably seeing their contributions here coming up in the live stream pretty quickly they've already gone off to the races and have started to produce some pretty cool things i'm very excited about their addition to the team so very happy with that front on the uh on the development side progress towards alpha 2 has been making a considerable amount of of of uh progress um from the design side you know we've we've gotten through a lot of the iterations that we wanted to see in alpha 2 as part of our rescoping and prototyping has now gone off and and begun work on the on the combat side you're probably going to be seeing some updates coming over the next maybe one or two um live streams so that's going to be fun to see and get people's feedback on you've been seeing a lot of the character updates coming out of our character team for the races the player character races uh in addition to that the environment team has has gotten a lot of work done on the biomes in alpha 2 the playable area that we're going to have production has been doing a considerable amount of work on the road map towards alpha 2 getting us greater navigational tools on that front as well and engineering has been kicking away both on um on the feature sets that are going to be present in alpha 2 that weren't in alpha 1 expanding those feature sets working on the network side as well as the character customization and our back end from a micro services team um so a lot of great work has been done at the studio very excited for the progress that uh january and february has seen i'm it's looking good as a prognosis going forward uh just the amount of work that's getting done so very excited about that and you know i know you gave a shout out to the hr team but i'm just going to give one more shout out to them because it's something that you don't think about as like an employee every day but we've changed some of like the the ui stuff that we're working with on the on the back end for like pto like requesting pto seeing other team members how they hire like the org charts work and as a as a leader being able to like see my staff stuff really quick like and the ui just is so much better uh i appreciate all the work that they've been doing on that front yeah john you know john and i are constantly talking about because you know hr falls under the operational side his purview at the company and really he's been very impressed with the work that that hr has been doing and so have i and just kind of seeing the happiness that it brings to our leads and to the rest of the company um you know some of those changes and and uh things you know you you don't give the second thought unless it's bad and then when it's good and you're not thinking about it that's the perfect when all your employees are like hey this ui is weird i don't know how to do this thing and you're like uh yeah let me talk to them figure it out but they did a fantastic job with that so appreciate it greatly absolutely um awesome and i know people you want a studio tour we're not quite ready for that yet but when we are we'll let you know we are starting to get some of the little areas set up and we will be doing kind of starting up dev discussions at some point here uh once that is complete um steven has to approve the budget for those little areas that we're going to start decorating and we'll start recording in those spaces we're also trying not to interrupt people's work uh so that's also the other side of it is get you guys cool like content but also you know not disturb people while they're trying to do their stuff

10:51 Production Update

um so with that i think we're gonna swap over to chatting uh with brian langford our special guest today yay mr executive producer uh tell us kind of like let's first start with what is production what does production do well actually wait before we even begin there brian tell me about what brought you into the gaming industry oh my gosh wow um you know i've uh my whole life i've spent playing games uh from the early 80s with my dad playing board games all up through and all you know getting the console games and playstation and computer games and realistically fun fact about brian by the way you mentioned board games brian is an exceptional tabletop gamer whether it's board games or his own creation of a of a uh economy card game i was playing with him like he is a very exceptional we were playing lords of water deep the other day and i was just like okay brian i love lords of water deep it's a good game yeah so i mean you know passion has been always there for gaming and uh and tabletop rpgs so the blend naturally of course is d and fantasy games like that that led me into wanting to be a part of you know the gaming industry so i think maybe the best in the 90s and early 2000s i played a ton of starcraft and diablo and blizzard games and i was doing web design for a more corporate job and i was like i really just need to break into the game industry and so i tried my hand to get into blizzard for i think over a year and a half or two years finally got in there and stayed there for 11 years and switched over into the production track away from sort of web design and web development stuff so yeah and then you know 11 years later i left there and i went to nc soft for a while worked on blade and soul and a couple other titles there and now now i've found my new home my home home my forever home yeah so what is it about production that attracted you to want to be a producer so that's an interesting story um to some degree anyways i guess uh i started in production in the cinematics group at blizzard and the high fidelity pre-rendered cinematics were just the thing of blizzard at the time right so it was a opportunity to get in at one of those the coolest jobs possible um so uh and i got my my legs out uh learning from some pretty cool cats there uh in the production field before switching gears right before leaving that group so uh that's what really got me into production is uh being a part of that cool team and then again just once i learned all the production routes it was though that my wings were intact it was time to fly yeah that's pretty awesome so most people don't really probably know what production provides a development team during development how would you go about explaining that role and and what your team brings to a development process i love that question because that's the question i always get because people don't really i mean i know our community is super savvy and so they probably already know this stuff but uh but the question i get from people that are not you know in gaming and in the industry and stuff they say what the heck does a producer even do what do you do what do you so we what we do for the most part like our our underlying most important mission is supporting the development team and the process of development right and and that takes on several hats um but primarily it's making sure that we measure twice cut once look at things work with leads to unblock um any kind of problems they're having set up dependencies so that people can keep you know these buzzwords are going to kill me [Laughter] but it's true i mean they slowly what the process and the function is yeah yeah oh yeah 100 it's uh it's just yeah so uh yeah we we basically work to yeah it's it's my ship navigation analogy uh that i use a lot with you at work uh which is we we try our best to create the the opportunity maps we can show you the shortest route from point a to point b we can tell you all the risks that's involved with going straight there we can have you navigate around a different you know around a different way to get there and tell you all the risks and opportunities and how it's a little slower but maybe a little safer uh i don't know i used i used to use the three navigation point thing where it's like literally like there's a map and then at the top of the map there's your location you're trying to get to and if you go straight through the rivers it's very rough water you go around the ocean side there's the you know the the mermaids that'll you know pull you off and distract you or you go around the other side and it's you know the pirates cove and then you've got like people trying to like shoot your ship out of the water right but it's but it's safer than the rapids and it's you know that kind of thing so yeah yeah that's a big part of it the navigation isn't always so much of you know estimates and and timelines but also dependencies risks yes the levers that you can play with when you're augmenting what the schedule looks like are we talking resources are we talking features are we talking time you know these are the three components that a producer says these are your options and that's always been such a benefit to me from your team and from you um has been being able to you know prior to bringing on production right i had always heard horror stories about production and boy is that specific to the team because because without what what what you and jacob and jonathan and thomas and benoit and kevin and with your team um what your team provides me and the leads with is so important when talking about the overall scheme of of bringing something to a milestone completion right and knowing when that milestone is going to occur what are the risks associated with it where are the dependencies what are the blockers helping communicate across teams um you know you guys are in a sense the nervous system of the development body right yeah i like that analogy yeah yeah and that's that's definitely what we do um and uh we're blessed to work with a great team of people and when we get in there into the trenches with people like the engineers and we do identify you know hey these design docs need they're coming over and they need to be fully specced out we need to do feasibility checks we need to then load in dependencies on tools and stuff like that so that is very much what we're talking about with creating those navigation scenarios yeah yeah absolutely absolutely very cool yeah super duper nice rundown of the production of the production you guys feel like you guys feel like in the audience that you you if you didn't know coming in what production does as part of a development team do you feel like you have a better understanding now the role that production plays in creating a thing like Ashes of Creation somebody said a pro-duck ton i think like a question that might be handy here which is like you know not not a softball one is more of when you do you know encounter issues how do you guys work on resolving those right as things may come up or well that's another big part of what production does is we are literally um at the forefront of visibility and communication too so when there are issues and we can foresee them coming uh which is part of our uh our may our our makeup um if we see those things coming it's our job to try to pull people in and talk to them um it's it's what is it like lead by influence right uh not not with teeth so it's get people in and go hey guys this might be a problem let's let's have a chat about what we could do with this um and then identify like again some scenarios that might pan out and we just pick and choose by collaborative means right yeah very important another aspect of production is that you know they're working constantly with the leads of each department and understanding what a particular sprint entails for their team right in in helping to kick off that sprint um and and identifying um you know what it is that uh the expectancy is at the end of a particular sprinter milestone is going to be from a feature component from a research component and then and then incorporating that and translating that to the rest of the team so that the the company as a whole has an understanding of the direction of a particular sprint or milestone well we're glad that people you all feel like you have a better understanding of it i know steven and i talk about production a lot um so we wanted to kind of give a face to that as well as a little bit more of a background and understanding of like what it is and if you guys have any questions about that feel free to pop those in there but yeah

20:07 Design & Engineering Update

we will move on to our design and engineering because we still have quite a few pieces of content that we need to go over today um so toss it over to you steven first and foremost what is design and engineering working on and then i know we have kind of a little bit more of a deep dive that we're going to do on animal husbandry oh that's right we're going to talk about animal husbandry that's scary [Laughter] oh my goodness um so you know maybe um do we have it wasn't there there's a little video on the animal yeah fourth the animal husband oh for the animals do you want me to get into that now you want me to talk about other stuff design other things whichever one you want to do first okay giving the overview might be handy and then we can go into the deep dive absolutely um as you guys have been aware over the last few live streams we've been talking about the process post alpha one and preparing um for alpha 2 has been a lot of work on the design side of going through systems and and iterating upon some of those systems and um you know prepping some of the new tools for um for the alpha 2 uh testing period for players to participate with a big portion of that has been combat has been class design um i'm i think i have a three-hour meeting today actually on some of the class changes or class hybrid class changes that we're looking to do for alpha 2. um a lot of that stuff has been very fruitful um having these long discussions with the different design pods um designs broken up into different pods that relate to content they relate to um you know narrative points of interest nodes combat you know economy itemization crafting artisanship these pods all kind of have purview over what iterations are being made to some of those systems some of those designs and then they work closely with engineering to uh get those things implemented and and developed from a future standpoint um one of the really interesting discussions um that we've had in preparation for alpha 2 has been the roll out of the animal husbandry system and i know we've talked a little bit about this in the past uh what animal husbandry is what's it what its intentions are but we really got into some um so okay so first of all let me kind of set the stage just so you guys have an understanding and maybe at some point maybe post launch of of ashes of creation we record all of our design discussion sessions right and i i think it's really cool to have those things recorded because at some point in the future it might be might be an opportunity that we show those recordings we don't know we also have posterity's sake hold on now we also have a bloopers folder where we keep silly stuff that has happened like funny bugs and things like that that we want to share with you guys you know later when it's more fun to make jokes on it because we have a you know a fully fleshed game for you to love and adore absolutely yeah so look back on the funny moment so let me let me set the stage for this so uh one of our um awesome designers the gentleman by the name a distinguished gentleman by the name of bucky collins um he was the uh he was the main contributor of this proposal on animal husbandry right so you have to understand some of these some of these design ideas or changes as they're being presented to the rest of the design team can really get deep into some real world scientific research and on the animal husbandry side there was a significant amount of like genetic research and how we can take that that genetic element of real life and and what you know what they represent in in actual husbandry over into the game because in design first and foremost you're you're looking to make something that's fun but if what you make that's fun can also have some roots in realism in the real world right that makes it much more believable the suspension of disbelief is not as you know it's not as great a barrier um so that oftentimes can be uh can be a starting point so bucky comes in to the design meeting with you know there's about i don't know 12 or 13 designers that are sitting around kind of getting ready to hear this proposal because sometimes the designers will be either listening to the pod alignment or they'll be just kind of looking through our confluence and and just checking out some of the proposal documents as they're getting created and this particular proposal proposal doc on how to adjust animal husbandry for alpha 2 was like 20 pages long and they're they're supposed to be relatively shorter but this just had so much reference material from real world genetics that was being brought over into the proposal so bucky shows up at the at the proposal meeting and he pulls out a lab coat and he puts on a lab coat with his doctor glasses and he's like good afternoon everybody i'll be your presenter today my name is dr bucky you may refer to me as dr bucky so anyways uh talking to you guys a little bit about the meat and potatoes of animal husbandry and what you can you can expect to see in alpha 2 from this system right um you know one of the one of the big components of animal husbandry is going to be taming we talk about our artisan system and you guys know this that it exists within three main branches of gathering processing um and and uh crafting now of course let me caveat this anything i say here is subject to change but with that being said um taming is one of the gathering professions that players will be able to to use to both locate capture uh and also tame wild creatures in barrow tame creatures can then be trained and bred refined with the animal husbandry profession right so genetics and animal husbandry will follow um the we'll follow a mendelian model of real life genetics overlaid with magical tools that help understand and influence the process of the of these of these breeding of these animals in a fantastical way creatures will have characteristics that are determined by their genetics there will be a multitude of traits that are related to appearance uh performance combat efficacy even the different abilities that breeders can can bring forward uh in a particular mount or pet right um so no two creatures in vero will be the exact same meaning identical twins right you have a stat block that's going to be associated with certain um combat stats or speed stats endurances and then you're also going to have ability systems that get overlaid on top of those from a mount's perspective or from a pet perspective you'll be able to breed creatures study the offspring and make informed decisions when the features you want to pursue in the next generation become apparent in you in the offspring you've created species will have different traits creatures will have a wide variety of traits and characteristics strengths and weaknesses within their species the best version of a species will need to be to be blended uh from creatures from many places across there right so it's not going there is going to be an element of geographic location being being being relevant for the creation of certain types of breeds uh that's important and players will have to discover that for example the best horse would need speed from desert horses right the coat and the health from tundra steeds and the size and strength of ones that might be in the riverlands these types of things go towards creating um the necessary offspring that can then create the type of mount you're looking for and um powerful traits will be hidden in rare spawns um through rare mutations as well um you know mastery and animal husbandry will involve unlocking greater cross-breeding potential between species to create more fantastical creatures and there's even the potential for entirely new species uh to be unlocked by master breeders who are pushing the limits lastly once these creatures are are actually born there is an element of raising the creature so animals need to be raised from birth to adulthood and trained for the intended purposes either as a mount a pet a beast of burden or livestock right animal husbandry feeds a lot of these different um aspects um and you'll be able to specialize your focus as an animal husbandrist if that's a word um uh two to one of those particular ends players have a multiplayer you're like a rancher there you're a rancher a husband dressed i don't know i like the husbandress yeah yeah for sure a multitude of activities uh to perform like feeding cleaning the creatures taking them out for practice practice rides training them to fight monsters etc this period is very important however the the training period because it will have the greatest influence on the resulting quality of the genetically determined stats and abilities of the creature once they reach adulthood so basically as you're discovering these different genetic paths when pairing different animals uh and the and the offspring is born it will have a window of where a stat block will land but where it lands will be determined by the training phase by raising the creature up um and that's going to be an important aspect so it's just to give you a little bit of insight kind of on on where some of these professions are going especially animal husbandry is a big profession right and it lives across two worlds from gathering to processing um uh with the taming aspect and then the actual husbandry um and and you know these are things that in alpha 2 we're going to be needing to collect a lot of data on because that's that's something that is you know going to be important to see how players interact with this and how how relevant is it across our artisanship system is there too much of an emphasis on animal husbandry right is that is that profession just larger than many of the other professions and having kind of you know an equilibrium between those things yeah actually there are people asking if this was going to be a more like a deeper profession versus the other professions like the comparison or can they expect all the other professions to have that much like depth within them so that's a that's a great question and and honestly it was a concern among our design team when we were discussing this right um and part of boiling down the husbandry profession uh to something that's more equitable with the rest of the professions or vice versa bringing up the other professions to something that's more equitable with husbandry right i think [Music] i think the question is a good one i think we're going to find that out i think by offering specialization in one of four directions mounts pets um uh livestock um and i can't remember the fourth uh i'm sorry i'm i have i had like this crazy and the beast of burdens um i think allowing players to specialize in those directions will mitigate the comprehensive nature of the profession as a whole so there will be like a subsidiary pretty much you'll be able to you'll be able to specialize in one of those four could you specialize in all of them or would you only be able to specialize in one i just know people are gonna ask yeah sure it's a great question um so there's going to be some limited function to how how many professions players can master and within the animal husbandry system that might also be true right where when you choose one of those specializations you may have some base egg you may have some base access at a low level across all four and then as you progress further and one of those similarly to how we've architected the artisan system as a whole um you will only be able to specialize in one um so okay but it is it is a fair concern and it is something that alpha 2 is intended to test um people are wondering if fish would be included in those breeding like are those considered monsters or creatures so there there will be aquatic creatures that are yeah there will well not specifically fishing but there are aquatic creatures uh both from a pet and mount perspective um that you'll be able to breed as well so um then beyond that people had asked will there be rng elements or is it more like what you're saying where you need to go to these locations and research these places to bring these breeds together well any time i would imagine we're discussing genetics there's going to be an element of rng right so you know this is just scratching the surface of what was uh discussed as part of the system itself but there are elements of um recessive and dominant genes and the discovery of certain types of characteristics that mounts you breed will have based on that rng element you can increase the chances there based on proficiency you can also increase the chances based on method based on resources so you know it's not something that is a pie in the sky rng number but rather um something that you can hone over time and then the next question is in regards to like the recipes for i don't know if you'd call it recipes but the recipes for breeding different creatures uh will there be like a central place for people to share those recipes or um you know anything like that or a place where they can sell discovered um yeah that's that's a good question i'm not sure that there are going to be recipes per se instead what we're thinking about with the husbandry system is going to be a user interface panel that gives kind of a record of your successes and failures with certain types of breeding attempts right and then from there if you choose to share that information with other individuals you can of course uh but it's not something that's going to be streamlined through an interface that we would use for the player to be on their own look you guys use the word recipe i'm just copying your question somebody said sex apiece um and for those who maybe didn't catch everything that stephen had we will have this up on our youtube channel so you can replay it and relive it uh because he did already talk about you know taming and and raising creatures and uh i like basically i like how the system works i like how georgia builds said oh no what happens to the failures [Laughter] well you have a little graveyard in your you have farms and you use animal byproducts all the times across the farm right you never let anything go to waste there you go um all right anything else you want to talk about on design front or engineering front um before we move on to all of our lovely art that we have no i think we're good okay cool and thank you for chats by the way brian a lot of great follow-up questions brian as you've been you know you've been a part of most of these design meetings as well what what is the profession that you are most at home with in an mmo yeah wow what a great question no no no that's cool i know brian is a huge mmo gamer so yeah you know that's totally true and you're not going to like the answer though oh no i love it i want to hear it's it's anything that has to do with the enchanting paths oh there you go okay why wouldn't you like that answer i love enchanting yeah now are you the type of enchanter that likes to have like a little bit of risk and reward of like possibly destruction but for a high higher retiree yeah well that that is lineage and that is ion and i know right as long as it's not pay to win yes yes there we go i'm with i'm fine with losing the weapons truly to the people i am not okay with like insurance programs where oh yeah you have to buy like a scroll and when your sword breaks because you over enchanted it or whatever you can play that way i can't tell you how many times in like a lineage or an ion or or an arc age i had a guild member who was like i'm gonna do it i'm gonna over enchant it and we're just like no you shouldn't do you have a backup and he's like no yolo blow up and we never see him again he's gone you used it on your best in slot item that you had to work really hard to get uh oh yeah oh yeah that's i mean that's what happens everybody here in the chat knows it they have some some over-enchant stan that went and uh over-enchanted his only piece of gear blew it up and never was heard from again what about you stephen if you or do you gravitate towards a specific type of profession oh that's a good question i really like farming like i loved just the act of like planting something waiting for it to grow and then harvesting it um i especially liked it if there are okay okay i'll take this back so i do like that i think that's relaxing like after i'm out adventuring or something i just go to my home you know i'll literally role play late like sit in my chair or lay in my uh bed get some rested experience and i'll just watch a little youtube video or whatever get up go check the like grounds do i need to pick up some herbs and and excuse me i know sorry about that but then uh i also love fishing yeah i know thank you thank you i also like fishing i think fishing's a lot of fun as well and the games um that i played especially like i liked archeage's sports fishing i thought that was kind of cool um but yeah i kind of like farming i think i think farming's my favorite thing to do i like it when you can farm and get a lottery like there were the in one of the games there's like a thunderstruck tree right and you could you know put down a bunch of like cedars or whatever and i always anticipated coming back to the farm and it's like huh am i gonna get a thunderstruck or you know what's gonna happen here then yeah you didn't get any but um you know i do like that aspect yeah those are those ones that the mini games like those are you know when i say gravitate towards like enchanting there's less of a mini game ever in enchanting it's always recipes and it's collection right oh yeah but doing the mini games is that's a lot of fun that that's that's good times in mmos i have ptsd from mini games because i used to make minigames and like when i was a designer back in the day we did a lot of like flash mini games so i have i have qualms i like playing them as a player but creating them was a pain um i think for me i always change it up it depends on like the class i'm playing in the game that i'm playing and what's the best like what i'm gonna benefit from the most is what i normally go with but i do like farming i feel like farming always ends up being something that's like off to the side it's not specific to your class stuff whereas i find with class i always end up either being like a leather worker or a blacksmith or something like that to be able to benefit from it for my character and my and my guild yeah i definitely want to see a benefit um from any system i interact with some some beneficial progression right yeah yeah all right

40:14 Environment Art Update

well let's move on to our environment by the way real quick is that buffalo as like very small or is the fox very big it is very small i actually was thinking that but i didn't think he had time to like rescale it so i was like i'm not going to make him redo the scene but i was like is that like a buffalo buffalo or a water buffalo or a giant he's a baby that's actually kind of adorable we do need little tiny versions these guys are the coolest these are my favorite creatures so far they're just so oh yeah the big boys yeah the junguses um all right moving on to environment you've heard us talk about the riverlands actually a lot throughout this stream already if you go back and replay it and put all the pieces together oh maybe you'll get bonus points from me but this is kind of the area on the map that we're going to be talking about right now and i'm going to show you some basically what our environment team has been working on is really focusing on the biome work specifically they have a lot of things to showcase on the riverlands perspective and this is the ancestral home of the aylin humans currently home of the kalar humans so if you are a k-lar maybe this will vary this will be very intriguing for you so i will show you something i just went through a biome review yesterday with environment and the art council and i was looking at these concept pieces that richmond did and i was like wow you know these these definitely capture elements of of our riverlands that we want to to have but even more so incorporating some additional fantastical elements right like one of my most and i don't know you know you guys obviously are lord of the rings fans you've seen lord of the rings yeah but one of my favorite scenes is in the fellowship when they're when they're going down that river and they come across those ancient statues that are just like giant statues and they're like putting their hand out you remember that yeah or that scene when they go across the street oh i know i know yeah absolutely some really cool ones those type that like moment to me was super was was really iconic and in that series right um and having elements that are incorporated as part of our biomes right not even just from a point of interest standpoint but just from a set dressing perspective for the for the for the territory itself having big fantastical elements of that um i think lends itself to to telling a story of a fantasy realm oh 100 it's things that you can't experience like in real life right but still feel almost realistic in a fantastical sense um yeah so this is this is going to be one of the primary biomes i believe i believe there's eight that are scheduled for for alpha one um and the riverlands is going to be a big portion of that yes and it is a very extremely like fertile alluvial plain uh there's alpha 2 alpha 2 i'm sorry we have there's going to be like a lot of lakes rivers um estuaries uh to create networks of like picturesque hills surrounded by vast river networks so you're kind of getting a little depiction of those elements in these as well as the land is kind of broken up regularly with modest forest and little rocky outcroppings and eventually the they'll drain down to a coastal area so if you look at the whole entire map you can kind of see where those those rivers and those lakes kind of go down to uh all reminiscent of classic pastoral farmlands so very very fertile lands that would be great for farming kind of fitting right perfectly into the animal husbandry topic that we were talking about before this would be a great place to have your creatures kind of like grow up and have a lot of things for them to eat and being able to provide a lot of crops and farming for yourself for sure moving on from there we have uh some pyri node concept art these are really rough so very early stage exploration of these they're experimenting with a lot of structure types node layouts materials uh to begin to understand what works and doesn't work specifically for the pyri and the renkai we have to keep in mind a lot of the mode design limit or the the node design limitations including like racial influential influence uh transfer layout restrictions location influence etc so these are really complex problems that they're trying to solve and keep in mind as they're building out these areas especially for the unique races so early on they're just trying to kind of test their waters see where things are and see where stephen wants to kind of align everything yeah i think the big component here when looking at these concepts for the pyra is essentially um you know their architecture is infused almost with the surrounding trees and vegetation right and then how do we encapsulate that from a node perspective in biomes that may not be forest oriented right you're going to have an outcropping of these large tree structures that are integrated with the building types on the footprint of the node itself so you may have an outcropping of trees in the middle of a desert you know how are we that these are the types of questions that you know some of these cultures and architectures the way that the node is the node system is built that they can exist across a spread of 18 biomes but at the same time have to represent the cultural influence of these cultures that are intrinsically a part of a specific biome like the pirate right now the pirate are the extreme example from a culture perspective um because they're the one that's most integrated with this idea of trees you're looking at this one is uh this is the rank but um you know that's something that that these concepts and those concepts um were done by joe um uh i believe um for the pie right now joe was for the pirate and then the rank is right there yeah for ryan richmond yeah um i wrote it down this time so i know exactly who wrote it very good yeah the same thing is true here with these assets right um part of the biome that the renkai are accustomed to is a more swamp or marsh oriented right so they have these almost still like foundations on some of the assets because they're intended to sit above that marsh uh type area well how does that translate when we're moving into a desert or it's at a node in a tundra right you know those are elements that that have to be taken into consideration as as part of the environment's purview of creating a seamless transition between the influences of these cultures and the biomes in which they exist which can be diverse yeah so the environment team has been very very busy beyond that they are obviously our continuing work on you know props so here are some concepts for some wagons for the balloon that they're working towards uh so you can kind of see a few different versions of this that they're working on uh i totally felt like these were rickshaws [Laughter] um and then you know beyond that we also have you know environmental elements like moss and things like that those all need to be created the little tiny things that you never think about perhaps but we're we're paying attention to the little details i know as you're exploring the world uh keep an eye out for those those pieces because our artists are amazing i like era says a mossy house please i would take a house with some of that moss i think we have a few houses with my uh moss on houses no mouses in your house and then we have some more uh hukilar banners so i think we've shown a few of these but these are more of like the really fancy looking ones who did that moss the i didn't have a name for the moss but i know jeff did the balloon uh wagons i thought you wrote down all the names well they didn't give me names for everyone oh that's sad but i could maybe figure it out um but yeah uh let me double check figured out oh no it's okay you're fine you sure yeah we can we can check when right when we start talking about the race yeah i think environment didn't really share the uh the names for some of those elements in the future i will request that from tristan uh there we go all right next step

49:41 Character Art Update

so this one i don't know if you want to do some prefacing before we reveal something that no one has ever seen before yeah on the character art side all right let us preface so um first this uh rework of the pirae uh character race uh was spearheaded by manny i believe that's correct yes yes um and manny has done uh had done a great job with the reveal of the uh vec so to give you a little context um obviously character races are are super important right these are these are the choices that we make at the onset of our adventure in an mmorpg you know what race not just mechanically uh aligns with our decisions if those races have game mechanics behind them from a stat perspective but visually and culturally and historically you know what are these what do these races represent so it's important that visually they're distinct right and everyone's seen you know fantasy games do elves so everyone's seen them do humans everyone's seen them do orcs right there's a there's an established kind of expectation almost behind what these traditional fantasy races represent and there's a risk because whenever you're creating a new ip or a new story or a new world a new universe a realm in which things don't have to always be the norm you can take a little bit of creative liberty uh to redefine some of the aspects of a particular race um and that can be a good thing because it's something that is new to players it's something that is unique to the to the realm that we're building the the the uh surroundings that you have right so what we wanted to do was push a little bit more on the unique side of what the pi ray would look like from a visual perspective um and uh i believe in manny's um creation uh that you're about to see here um there were some elements a little bit more closely aligned with being kind of one with nature uh and that's as you saw in the concepts some of the the thought process behind their architecture and so it would make sense that it would be a thought process included in the actual visual representation of that character race so this is the first time that you will be seeing the pi ray character race let us show it it has been shown there it is there is the pirae character in all her glory and we also have some of the modeling work we'll show you in a little bit that's begun um as well but just to give a little bit more context here so i can see i think that you guys like it i don't think they like it stephen i think they're not fans so that is that i do have some questions that i wanna uh i know that they're gonna ask is for instance do i have to have antlers as a pyrite character sure that's a that's a great question and that is really the predominant characteristic that stands apart between what traditional wood elves from a fantasy sense have been and what our approach has been uh with Ashes of Creation so the answer is yes uh players will have to have some form of these antlers slash um you know secondary side of that i know we haven't revealed tulnar things but how will that be balanced in regards to tulner having horns versus pyre sure i i think that that um you know that they can live with each other right they there's obviously an element of the silhouette that needs to be distinct and unique because from just the fact that we do have pvp in the game you always want to offer a visual threat assessment knowing the characters you're coming up against right from a distance horns can be a part of that visual silhouette but i think they'll be distinct enough that players will be able to recognize the difference um additionally one thing of note uh you asked uh players are interested you know do they have to have these they do however from a character customization standpoint these will be adjustable right their length their size their width their color whether or not they'll have features like flowers that can bloom on the actual antlers if they have buds right how do those antlers interact with climates as you move into them right do they s do they bloom in this in a artists are losing their minds right now we have already mentioned that that's been scoped already we've already yes we have already scoped that remember if you guys will recall about two about two um live streams ago we showed what's the little turtle dude's name uh terrapin is it the terrapin turtle the turbine turtle we showed you that with different uh weathers and time of day that the effects around the little tree stump right changed the same can be true potentially for character races as well and as an example having flowers that might bloom on these antlers i think would be an interesting component maybe they're bioluminescence right maybe you can unlock these types of character featurettes later uh in the game as well but anyways those are adjustable [Music] and um players can play with them and as a matter of fact they don't have to be symmetrical either they can be asymmetric in those adjustments i think that would be interesting as well um so yeah let's take a look at the uh let's take a look at the model of this the work now now keep in mind this is work in progress so uh the model component here is is still being created in preparation for alpha two um and this is just a rough block out yeah yep this is a sculpt that uh was it atkins that did this or no this is the same this is this is manny as well yeah this is awesome very cool very cool yeah so this is uh this is the model starting to get worked on um you will see this be very close to the image you just saw um once it's complete and then once we get it hooked up and put into the character customize customizer you're going to be able to to see just the level of flexibility and customization that's going to be provided by our engineering character teams um they're doing yes they are um and then beyond that and i'm sure we're gonna get your guys's feedback on that front so we'll probably i'll have the community uh managers put up something for you but we'll definitely want your feedback on on this beauty so definitely let us know uh what you're thinking absolutely and by the way you guys gave great feedback uh on the vec and the character races post last stream so by all means please go give some commentary um uh as you did before on our reddit on our forums on twitter or whatever um and tell us what you think about the pyra you know this is definitely the easiest for us to consolidate the feedback so if you can post there that would be super handy for i want i want them everywhere they can be everywhere if we're gonna gather it it's just i'm letting them know like it's the easiest for us to gather when it's on our forums i like it when they share across their social medias and people get to see things that they might not see if they're just on our forums so go and talk about it yes all right next up we have um some updates for our kayla rankai based on some of the feedback that you all provided so i'll start with the kayla and we have our female version which is the first time we're showing uh her updates as well oh so these are some of the skin updates yeah yes and the first time they're seeing the female kayla really yeah well with the new updates yeah yeah i love her hair yeah hair is good skin updates great did they have those types of bikinis in the middle the middle middle ages i don't think so brian did that i'm going to change it up i don't know i'm going to go research it research bras go middle medieval bras i think i have actually searched that before for a purpose of something like this before it's funny all right then we said somebody said lol people pooped in buckets dude i don't know if they would waste a good bucket like that i just think they did it outside they just like open their window poop out the window there you go next up we have some renkai um updates as well look at him he looks so good he's he's a chunky boy he's a beefcake yes he is he's a beefy he's a beefy one yeah i like the uh i like the influence almost what appears to be somewhat scaly on the arms and the back and the skin a little bit i mean it looks like you know he may have some type of influences of dragonborn in his lineage or something i don't know that's maybe some something people can theorize about or chat about if if the renkai or the their parent race the kaivec had some history with a dragon at some point oh maybe hmm i wonder i don't know it's really funny because someone asked us and pi they're like are they dragons or like you don't know yeah yeah doesn't their banner also have a dragon in the uh in the iconography maybe that's interesting it's an interesting take an interesting idea i have to explore that one a little bit okay beyond that could just be dry skin he could just maybe he needs some lotion this guy needs a bath and body works beyond that we've got um some new stuff to show you on the costume front obviously our artists not only are creating new models and updating models but they're also working on all of the costumes and you know items that you can achieve in game this is one of the uh summer backers uh items but what was this one called majesty the majesty i love the shoulder work that big pauldron thing yeah i like that like the iridescence in it too yeah the metal there's the uh the metal material looks good and you can see it how it light affects it too which is really cool it's very cool yes um and then we don't always show a lot of these work in progress ones um but i think this one will be fun for you guys to check out which is our little mushroom one the muscarian marshalls version but this is kind of getting to see the early versions of you know how how they create these costumes and then what they turn out to be so if he's hungry can he just start eating his hat that'd be great just like carve a little piece off and make like a portobello mushroom sandwich or something that sounds yummy what kind of mushroom is that i don't know toadstool a toadstool it's big though a mushroom nerd out there will know there you go uh the next one is and the final one that we'll be showing is the balmain this is the bearded balmain yeah it's a long maybe i was watching like a a charlie charlie charlie but very cool very different um as you guys know we make some strange creatures sometimes uh this one's not as strange as some of them but it's just a long it's so maybe you know there's like two people you know those horse costumes yeah that's what i feel like one person on one side one dude's just like you know keeping his distance and that's why it's so long to me what's more weird is that he has like a cat tail oh that's kind of cool yeah yeah you're like yeah i designed that it's because he's so long and because of that length he needs something to balance a little bit yeah i like it

1:03:23 Outro and Q&A

all right and then with that we will head on to our q a so i will try to get through these as quickly as possible because i know we're a little over time our question first to start the boss is from to start us off is bergund iron guard and this is about enemy ai will enemy ai be aware of their environmental surroundings and would ranged npcs be able to use cover when fighting players oh that's a good question um some encounter design is going to of course use the environment right whether that be from a hazards perspective or there's ai that you know at a certain hit point percentage or some condition is met some predicates met um the behavior tree says go run behind this corner right like there is definitely going to be examples of that as part of our encounter designs whether that's going to be something that's heavily used as part of our general overland population um you know it might be probably not as prevalent there but yeah that's something that's going to be available through our a systems all right and then our next question is from fosuzu and they want to know about naval content will any classes or archetypes have buffs or restrictions during naval combat or will they behave the same as they do on land um specific class related uh interaction on the naval side there's definitely going to be elements of utility in class design that will be beneficial for naval gameplay um whether or not that is going to be highly focused as a naval specific ability probably not um but there will be some overlap with those utility skills and and and circumstantially what's happening at sea right for example there might be some type of ability that a class has to hold their breath longer underwater right um and that would be something that's beneficial of course at sea um if you go overboard i suppose let's hope you stay on your boat as much as possible absolutely okay our next question is from hurt may or may and they want to know about climate effects um assuming certain abilities are stronger or weaker in different climates does that extend to the weekly seasons and the more varied weather changes across vera yeah i think so i think that um the descriptors we use to define mechanically what a particular climate offers from uh cold arid you know hot those are going to be descriptors that are also incorporated as part of weather events um and during those weather events those those weather events the area of effect that the event is occurring in will likely have its climate descriptor overridden by whatever the event is specifically so tornadoes might be windy uh blizzards might be cold right and and if uh you know an arctic dragon comes into a temperate climate um it brings the cold weather with it uh and that can can be uh interacting with skills and abilities or other functions like farms and whatnot very interesting to see how that pants out our next one is going to be the the that from dynasty life and they want to know about mounts will you be able to negate fall damage while mounted and if not would there be a reduced amount of fall damage or no reduction at all and i know we've talked about fall damage before but i don't think we've talked about while you're on a mount what are intended solutions i think i think the intended solution for falling while mounted um is that the damage is still going to occur but it will first be soaked by the mounts hit points um and then if there is overflow and the mount dies as a result then we'll have to determine whether we want that overflow to go to the character or if the mount will soak the overflow but that's something that we'll likely test all right and this one's from neuroguy and they want to know about procedural generation uh you've mentioned procedural generation catacombs under divine uh metropolis metropolis metropolises but do you currently plan have any plans to use procedural generation for any other types of content like any examples for dungeons or raids or islands etc sure i think i think that procedural tools are good as long as that procedural is well defined and has specific parameters for which it exists and is not going to be visually or mechanically perceived as procedural right like that's that to me is the is the is the gray area of using i mean obviously mmos are huge right and and wherever we can leverage procedural mechanics um in such a way that does not appear procedural we should um so there is a there's a healthy blend between the things that we do in having defined parameters for it and then incorporating a procedural component um and in that sense you know it it it will be perceived well uh but where we the predominance of of of kind of what we're implementing should be curated or by design yeah and we've shown some things if you watched our last live stream we showed the road system and how those roads will kind of be generated as well as how they'll level up based on nodes so very interesting right and and to be clear like even on the road front right like there's still restrictions those paths are defined between each node prior right um so so they become visible and progress when the predicates dictate a node reaches a certain level or you know some tree falls in the center of the road or something right so in a sense you know those aren't really um procedural per se but they're kind of curated in those connections um but yeah all right the next one here is from overthrow and they want to know about inventory how much larger will a metropolis warehouse's inventory be than a caravan's inventory and i know that's very specific you might not have the answer to that caravans that's the question yeah that's a very good question actually um trad's been doing a good amount of work with the inventory system and we i think have really cool um plans for alpha 2 that that utilize this unique inventory system what is the um what is the difference between capacity in a caravan versus that of a warehouse right um so one of the things we're talking about with caravans is that resources get placed in crates right and caravans have great capacity and crates have different levels of quality and the higher the quality of the crate the greater diversity of materials can be stored within the crate and the greater the capacity potentially however you would need a crate to transfer supplies back to a caravan series or back to a node from which then you have the storage capacity in your warehouse or in your inventories so transported goods by caravan require crate capacity first and then can translate into storage capacity within a warehouse inventory management system or a personal inventory bag management system um that's just to give you a little bit of insight that's part of the direction that we've been going in iterating upon our inventory management system and how caravans interact with that inventory management and material resources um and then where those will live for alpha 2 is going to be a lot of testing of course but there are some some elements of that and with like all things we're in development so everything's subject to change so just keeping that in mind as well but um i would like an uh an endless crate stephen an endless crazy bottomless crate thank you i have to talk to trad about that bag of holding hook yes there you go the bag of holding or the uh the handy haversack yes yeah we can't have those those are someone else's buttons our next question is from bartik and they want to know about freeholds will processing within freehold be passive or require some kind of activity or mini game to work i missed the first part what is it in freehold you're talking about um will processing within freeholds be passive or require some kind of activity or mini game to work both right now the um the proposal isn't that it's a mini game want to kind of stay away from the minigame aspect and we're gonna try it as an opt-in um but um right now processing as it stands for alpha 2's implementation is that there is a certain amount of prep work that's required first for the industry specific component which is the building right that prep work might be finding a certain amount of lumber to light the fire in in a kiln or whatever right to a certain temperature in order for you to process a certain grade of ore and that grade of ore being malleable then into an ingot right and that produces that ingot so to speak now in that process there's a gathering component there's a preparatory phase there is a time related component and then there's also possibilities that the machine you're using itself has some type of um gameplay layer uh should the kiln get overheated um or you know and you have to throw some water on it or something you know like there are elements there in that process that we kind of want to mimic you know this gameplay opportunity for players to interact and not just be a time sink but time sync is also a component of it as well because that's the throttle for you know the introduction of processed materials from raw gatherables into the economy um so yeah all right this next one is from emberstone and they want to know about mount skills will there be skills for mounts dedicated to making long distance traveling fun and i know we have talked about my own skills already in the past i think this is specifically about more like fun things they can do while they're whilst they're traveling on their mount um yeah i think that we've talked about this in the past right the ability to kind of do really big jumps and traverse interesting terrain and have gliding mechanics and um you know those are all traversal elements that break up the monotony of a steady pace or of a you know consistent path that you're taking right those i think help break that monotony up but then in addition we have travel between between nodes right that can be had which is more almost automated to a sense right either you take a flight path or your ground-based mount is like running along and if you want to break them off that path like you can interject but if there is you know from node a to b you can travel faster than normal mount speed between node a and b but you have to go to b before you go to c with that system you can't go from a to c so to speak right um uh so that's something that we're that we're working on as well okay and then we have our second to last our penultimate question from nia is about world building what do you think about adding additional satellites surrounding vera an example being multiple moons or celestial bodies in the night sky who said there was only one moon yeah there are there are multiple moons i think we've said that in the past um there are multiple moons um definitely the element of the night sky or even the day sky i think is um a fantastical touch that is often a missed opportunity in games that we've played that are fantasy right um uh i do feel that um that the sky box is a place where we can do a lot of fun and visually appealing and beautifully aesthetic things um so that is a component of the environment team lighting is so important it changes everything yeah we're very well aware and then not even just lighting i'm just talking about like you know um seeing a colorful moon as opposed to the gray you know normal moon right like seeing um you know the ability for some aurora borealis or something right in the night sky like the skybox the skybox in my opinion is a real scene setting opportunity um and and a lot of games and i think more recently a lot of games are emphasizing that but the games i played growing up didn't i want to go on a stargazing um adventure like bring your caravans with a bunch of like telescopes on them and just go out there and watch the stars and stuff that'd be cool absolutely a lot of fun all right our next question and our final question is from naroc wanting to know about naval combat what kind of attachments will we be able to place on our ships that's a really cool question i want to know the answer to yeah i think i think those attachments live within three categories right they're offensive they're defensive in their utility um and that's primarily the types of of attachments you're going to come to us to expect it's going to be um you know class ships are going to also have classes those classes are going to dictate the type of of attachments that can be applied and in what quantity right like a like a military vessel type um may have more capacity for for weapon based attachments right um a transport ship might have more capacity for uh defensive based uh attachments um and then you'll have more versatile ships that can can can share across uh those types so um you know in that sense you are constructing a componentized ship for the types of activities you intend to do are you a raider are you a mover of goods are you an adventurer like these types of things are going to inform your decision of what the attachments you're going to have in those three categories all right very cool and that is it anything else either of you guys want to add in here before we wrap up for today's stream another month has gone by another month has gone by we're in tomorrow we're heading into march are you guys ready i'm ready i'm definitely ready uh no there's been a lot of a lot of awesome things going on and honestly it's it's it's great that you guys in the audience are super patient with this alpha 2 process um we appreciate that from the development side uh we want to show you all the things um and as every month goes by we are getting closer and closer to showing you some of these new systems and the new combat and the new art aspects and we hope you guys are enjoying kind of watching along with that process because it means a lot to us to get your feedback it means a lot to us to see your excitement that's always a very healthy and positive relationship between us as developers and you guys as the community um and the more you see things the more you're able to spread the word about ashes so we appreciate that as well um as we start to get more things um in a presentable state i'm excited to see your guys's response to that it's going to be fun fun next few months it'll be the most fun for my team too because we get to write articles and make video content and share that along with you all as well so i'm very excited absolutely and thank you lankford for joining us yes thank you brian that was thank you for having me am i muted yeah no you're good we can hear you anything you want to say to the community it was really nice to meet you guys thanks for hanging out with me today and a happy three years brian yeah i know right happy three years it's been great okay i'm looking forward to the next 30. yes cutting a short come on they say they're going to be inventing something soon medically that'll let us expand the human lifespan by like two-fold wow i i hope they get that sooner than later no right i hope they get it within my lifetime so i can live longer that's what i'm saying i got things to do man all right with that um we hope that you like seeing the new race model for the pirae and if you do definitely give us feedback if you don't like something let us know we will have some more form uh post up as well with feedback so just give us all the feedback that you possibly can we love it and appreciate it and you're already seeing adjustments and changes and you will be seeing those as we progress through our development process our february cosmetics will be swapping over on march 9th so if you want those get them now and of course thank you all for tuning in and thank you to brian and steven for joining me i know you all are busy and to all of you stay healthy and safe we appreciate you and if you want to relive the action of this live stream we will have it up on our youtube channel and it will also be cut up on our twitch channel for you really quickly as soon as the stream is over and follow us on all of our social channels twitter facebook instagram snapchat whatever your jam is um we post there quite often a lot we interact with you all so we'd love to see you there and if you want to chat with us more we're on discord uh our ashes of creation discord as well as over on our forums so come hang out with us come chat with us and we will see you next month for another development update bye everybody hi everybody [Music]