Talk:2023-04-28 Livestream

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Intro

• 00:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our April development update for Ashes of Creation. We hope that

• 00:22

everyone has been having a magnificent month. And we hope that you know, you're excited

• 00:28

spring is in the air. I know I can't believe spring has come aka allergies. Soon to be summer too.

• 00:37

It's been it's been wild. I think we say this every single month or like you blink and a month

• 00:42

has gone by but I feel like an entire half a year has almost happened and I'm like how?

• 00:47

How? Well, these are the I mean, to be fair, these streams are very much like touchpoints.

• 00:53

Or excuse me, they're kind of like, you know, where I put my head back up and I say, Oh,

• 00:59

a month has gone by because each of the weeks you're just kind of in the thick of it. And you

• 01:02

don't really realize the passage of time except for these kind of staple dates where we talk with

• 01:08

the community and we have, you know, we know it's monthly. So we're like, Oh, okay, wait,

• 01:12

a month has gone by, you know, a moment of reflection. And you're always like, Wow, I don't

• 01:16

know if anyone ever takes a moment of reflection. But when you stop for a moment, you're like,

• 01:20

what have I done? Oh, that's a lot of things. For those of you who are new here, I'm just going to

• 01:25

quickly go over what you'll be seeing today and you can probably see it below. We are going to

• 01:31

be going over our quick reminders, our Mage update, our art update, studio update, and then

• 01:36

questions and answers from our forums that we always pull before. So Vaknar has gone through

• 01:41

them all and he also answers all of them for you if you didn't get your question answered here. A

• 01:47

lot of questions are repeat questions, so he goes through and answers them. And then he also, you

• 01:52

know, if your question didn't get answered, you can always ask it again in the future if it's one

• 01:56

that we have not asked before. But obviously, I'm Margaret Crone, I'm your Director of

Reminders

• 02:00

Communications and with me as always is Stephen Sharif, our Creative Director. And before we get

• 02:07

things started, we'll quickly go over our YouTube comment that was selected. So we'll toss it over.

• 02:13

Toss it over. Today's one is from Timma200 and they want to know, people camping open world

• 02:20

dungeon areas was a huge problem in ESO. Please intrepid prevent this. And I don't know, Stephen,

• 02:25

if you have thoughts on how that is going to work out.

• 02:32

That is a good question. People camping open world dungeon areas. Well, you know, part of

• 02:40

Ashes of Creation that's a very important aspect is that there is a competitive nature to

• 02:46

the environments, the open world. We're a non-faction based game where your reputation

• 02:51

matters and the relationships that you build matter and those relationships can be competitive.

• 02:55

They can be adversarial. They can be cooperative and friendly. And camping really is a mechanism

• 03:02

in which players are spending time at a certain location in order to either continue control over

• 03:10

that location or to prevent others from having access. And so one of the ways that we kind of

• 03:16

allow certain systems to interact with that idea of camping is you have opportunities to initiate

• 03:25

things like guild wars where you can engage with those individuals. You can participate in the

• 03:31

flagging system where you can attempt to remove those individuals. You know, there are opportunities

• 03:36

for player friction to occur if people are doing things that are not received well by the community

• 03:44

or by your group of players or by others. And this is an opportunity to engage in the political

• 03:50

aspect of the game and the politics in an open world, sandbox oriented type of game design

• 03:58

is really the lifeblood of what keeps many players interested and invested in the outcome of those

• 04:06

types of political situations. So I would say that it's not necessarily a bad thing

• 04:14

when some group of players might try to extend or exert their type of influence to have control

• 04:22

over locations. That's an opportunity for player political engagement to occur. And, you know,

• 04:30

sometimes there are in our past experiences of playing MMOs, maybe an imbalance that can happen

• 04:36

between some groups that either grow too large or consolidate too much power. And it's difficult for

• 04:43

the server to push back against those individuals. I would say in the designs of Ashes of Creation,

• 04:48

we've created a lot of opportunity for smaller groups to affect change in the world and changes

• 04:54

that can be negatively affecting of larger groups. We have anti-zerg mechanics when it comes to

• 05:00

traveling across the world and being able to be at any singular location and any given point of time

• 05:06

or quickly by fast teleportation we don't have access to. That's one example. But also there

• 05:11

are open world objectives that can occur through things like guild wars and node wars. There are

• 05:16

also your home base of operations which are nodes that can be adversely affected should players do

• 05:20

something that are against their reputation. These are the types of interactions we want to occur.

• 05:26

And those points of friction are opportunities for players to get engaged. So, you know,

• 05:34

I would say it's difficult in an open world environment in a non-faction based game to kind

• 05:38

of prevent players from loitering in a particular dungeon or area to try to exert that control. But

• 05:44

there are a lot of opportunities system wise for players to push back against it.

• 05:50

All right. And, you know, if you want your comments spotlighted whenever we have our next

• 05:54

dev update, which is going to be the April one here, you can head on over to our YouTube and

• 05:59

make sure that you subscribe to us and you'll have to flag it so that we can see that because

• 06:04

if you don't have it public then we can't tell that you're subscribed. And then also leave a

• 06:09

comment on the YouTube channel and we will select at random a person. So, yeah, we're excited to see

• 06:16

more of those things. And with that I will go to quickly go through some of the other updates that

• 06:21

we've had. So first and foremost, we've got our dev discussion that we just put out this month. So

• 06:27

we hope that you have been enjoying that. We've also had an office hours for it, which if you

• 06:32

don't know what that is, Vaknar and Broshun have been amazing in doing these calls with us.

• 06:38

Calls with folks and you can pop on and give your feedback in more of a kind of chat setting versus

• 06:45

in a forum setting. It's a little different. I don't think I've seen a ton of people doing stuff

• 06:49

like that, but it's really cool and hopefully you enjoy it. But this was on average how long do you

• 06:53

prefer a dungeon playthrough to take. And our next one will be on the mage archetype. So we love your

• 06:59

feedback. You know we do. So keep tossing it our way. And of course, if you didn't catch it, Stephen

• 07:04

did a community Q&A with Chibi Bree from the Golden Feather, Richie SH, and some Murg from

• 07:10

Ash's Pathfinder. If you want to check that out, it's over on our YouTube channel. So we hope that

• 07:14

you like that and get some of your questions answered from the community. And of course,

• 07:19

we do have our cosmetic swap over that will be happening on May 10th at 11am Pacific. So if you'd

• 07:26

like to snag these, you can do so now. If you're not aware, these are all things that are going to

• 07:32

be NPCs, creatures, building things like that in our game. So you're really helping us build the

• 07:37

world as we are creating it. And of course, a reminder that we do have a content creator program

• 07:43

that is still taking applications. This is currently in application phase and we will be kind

• 07:48

of closing that as we get closer to the invitation phase, which will be closer to Alpha 2. So as you

• 07:53

start seeing that happen, you might know, you might get some Inklings in your bones of what's

• 07:58

what's what's to come. And with that, I'm going to toss it over to Steven to talk a little bit about

Mage Archetype Preview

• 08:04

the Mage update before we showcase it. Yeah, absolutely. So as promised, and I know we've

• 08:11

been getting a little bit ahead kind of in what our future updates, monthly updates will include,

• 08:18

you guys been looking forward to the Alpha 2 Mage update for the last month. I know we talked about

• 08:24

that last month. This is an opportunity for you guys to see the direction that we've taken on some

• 08:30

of these abilities on the class kit for the mage. You're not going to see all of the abilities,

• 08:35

obviously, but you're going to see nine or ten abilities that relate to, you know,

• 08:43

utility spells, mobility spells, mainly DPS spells. And as it relates to kind of affecting

• 08:50

status conditions that have keyword interactions and can be promoted from like tier one to tier

• 08:55

two status conditions, mainly through elemental use of electrical type abilities and ice type

• 09:02

abilities. As is always very important, we are still a work in progress. We are still working

• 09:09

towards Alpha 2. This, excuse me, this demonstration was a little bit different than the ones we've

• 09:16

done in the past. This was a little bit more of a kind of test arena type of display. We go through

• 09:23

each of the abilities and we talk a little bit about them, but it's not going to be kind of a

• 09:29

run through of a location or an area or POI. Really, we're spawning some monsters, we're

• 09:35

showing the interactions between the abilities, and we are just kind of giving you a combat display.

• 09:40

And it's very important that you guys, when watching this, Keenan, who participated this,

• 09:45

asked a few questions that I think are very relevant to get kind of feedback on. So keep an

• 09:50

ear out for what those questions are and how they pertain, and we'll chat about them after

• 09:55

the demonstration. But enjoy these next 40 minutes of an early look at the Alpha 2 Mage update.

• 10:00

All right, see you when we get back.

• 10:15

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another live stream in the world of Vera. I am joined today

• 10:34

by three of our absolutely awesome developers. We have with us two regulars and one new face.

• 10:41

One of our engineers, obviously our glorious engineers, Keenan. How you doing, buddy?

• 10:46

Good. Thanks for asking.

• 10:48

Welcome, sir. Welcome back. It's just, let's see, last time you were on was for the tank,

• 10:53

I believe the tank showcase, right?

• 10:55

Yeah, that's correct.

• 10:56

Yeah. And then we also have, I think, as well from that showcase, one of our senior designers,

• 11:01

Mr. Trad. How you doing, buddy?

• 11:04

Doing good. Hello, everyone. Good to see everyone again.

• 11:06

And then we have a new face with us, one of our senior designers,

• 11:11

one of our visual effects artists, Mr. John. How you doing?

• 11:15

I'm doing really well, man. This is fun.

• 11:17

Yeah, this is fun. This is your first time on, right?

• 11:20

Yes, yes, it is.

• 11:21

And you have been doing a lot of work on the visual effects side. And today, I know many in

• 11:26

our audience have been anticipating this early work in progress look at the Alpha 2 Mage. And we

• 11:36

have, I'm sure already, the chat is ecstatic looking at the hot bars of abilities that we're

• 11:42

going to be looking at today. We're not going to go through all of them, but we are going to go

• 11:45

through, I believe, the electrical spells, some of the utilities and some of the frost abilities,

• 11:52

right, Tratt?

• 11:54

That's right. Yeah, we're going to be looking at a bit of an ice lightning mage. This will not be

• 11:59

the only elements that you'll see on the mage, but that's what we're going to be focused on today.

• 12:03

And just specifically some interactions between those elements and showing off how the elements

• 12:08

can be used together to create synergies.

• 12:10

Yes, and I know we've been talking about this, obviously, for a good amount of time and the way

• 12:14

that kind of the class kits synergize and work together. And you guys saw a little bit of that

• 12:19

with the tank demonstration between, I believe, two abilities had like a staggered to a knockdown

• 12:26

promotion. Is that right, Trent?

• 12:28

That's correct. Yeah, we're going to be diving a little bit deeper into that kind of stuff. You'll

• 12:32

see probably three or four different interactions within this kit, and that's just the start of it.

• 12:38

Cool. Now, we are in the Riverlands, of course, but we are... Where are we right now? I think we're at

• 12:45

the... This is like a... What is this place called? Is this the... This is the Hall of Judication,

• 12:53

which is... Was an Aelan, I guess, prison slash trial location that they kept criminals for court.

• 13:04

And we're not going to go inside this location because I think it's filled with some goblins

• 13:09

that might be a little bit beyond our pay grade. But outside, I think there are some more

• 13:15

friendly flowers, perhaps, that we can also play with and then maybe some rock monsters. But what

• 13:22

I want to do before we start there is I think it would be beneficial for us to first get kind of a

• 13:28

base on what each of these abilities do. I know that that was something that a lot of the players

• 13:33

really liked seeing before we actually get into some combat interactions. And then later, I'm going

• 13:39

to let trad show off some of the intricate combos when we kind of showcase the broader kit. But one

• 13:48

thing I want to tell the audience is that, you know, in our previous showcases, we've tended to

• 13:55

kind of showcase a little bit more gameplay oriented kind of walkthroughs of zones and areas

• 14:01

and have elements of different encounter designs and monsters and whatnot. Today, we're going to

• 14:07

really focus in on these individual abilities, their mechanics, and what it means for the broader

• 14:13

combat design of our archetypes in Ashes of Creation and hopefully get some good feedback

• 14:18

from the community on this direction. And I know Keenan has some questions that he wants to talk

• 14:23

about. And John, I know we're going to talk with him a little bit about kind of the next, I think,

• 14:28

next edge kind of technology that we're utilizing for some of our VFX and how these abilities

• 14:34

interact. So before we get started, let's go through these abilities one at a time. What's

• 14:40

our first one that we have here? This is something that I think we had in Alpha 1. This was our blink.

• 14:46

Is that right, Trad? Yep, this is one of the ones that we've brought back. This was definitely,

• 14:51

I would say, most of our favorite spells from Alpha 1. So we had to bring it back. Even the

• 14:55

visuals are just awesome. So yeah, anyone who played Alpha 1 should be pretty familiar with that.

• 15:01

I'm going to set my cooldowns to zero so I can show the abilities over and over again.

• 15:05

So this is the blink ability. And obviously, its purpose is to close the gap, to create a gap,

• 15:12

to reposition. Talk to me a little bit about the use case of a blink from the mage's kit perspective.

• 15:20

I mean, you covered it there. It's a gap opener, gap closer, whatever you want it to be. And

• 15:25

you know, we'll showcase some kind of that. We'll showcase that kind of gameplay and actual action

• 15:31

once we get to the encounter section of this stream. But you'll see that mages will probably

• 15:39

prefer to use this spell in different ways based on how you're speccing the mage. So if you are a

• 15:44

more ranged based classic mage, you'll most likely use this to create space to put between you and

• 15:51

your opponent. But like a more melee based mage might actually want to use this to get on their

• 15:56

opponent. Yes, to initiate. Absolutely. That feels like the way I would use it. And then after this,

• 16:03

we have a... Let me see. Before we get into the combat abilities, perhaps we use... You know,

• 16:10

actually, let me show the shield. Speaking of a combat mage, if you're in the middle of fighting,

• 16:16

talk to me a little bit about the shell. Yeah, this is a pretty classic mage spell that you've

• 16:23

probably seen before. It's just a big health shield. It absorbs a bunch of damage and it has

• 16:28

a duration. So usually you want to time it with when you're going to anticipate taking a bunch of

• 16:33

damage at once. And we'll show that off too in a little bit with some of our rotations that put

• 16:39

the mage in a little bit more danger for greater payoff. And this is kind of a short game. You can

• 16:44

see that the duration of the shell is one of the parameters that are augmented by some of our

• 16:54

augment abilities. So it could be potentially extended by an augment in the future. But it's

• 16:59

essentially short duration for those temporary hit points. Is that right? Kind of like if you're

• 17:03

stuck in a little bit of a bind. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the point of the duration. Like usually

• 17:09

these health shields can be pretty strong. And so timing that is part of the balance and also part

• 17:14

of the gameplay skill that comes into deciding when to use that and when to put it on cooldown.

• 17:21

And then let's show off this ball of lightning. Now, John, you have done a lot of work on the

• 17:28

tech side for VFX with regards to how lightning kind of interacts with surfaces from a sticky

• 17:34

surface perspective and just establishing what I think is a really cool even style guide and

• 17:42

shape language for this electricity. Talk to us a little bit about what it took to create this.

• 17:49

I think one of the things that helps set Ashes apart from an effects perspective is that we want

• 17:55

our effects to be dynamically generated. We want them to interact with the world. We want them to

• 17:59

feel like they are part of the combat. So when we come to wanting to work with something like

• 18:06

lightning, we actually want it to seek out different things in the world and stick to them.

• 18:12

We want it to feel like you are actually in control of that lightning, not just plastered on top.

• 18:18

So what we've been working on are kind of behavior systems where you model the behavior of the

• 18:24

lightning and how it should work. And then those systems get put into our effects and you get a

• 18:31

very consistent repetitive, not repetitive in its motion, but how it behaves result from it.

• 18:39

Yeah, I think it looks great. I love this ability too. And when we get into combat, you guys will

• 18:45

see kind of its use case. I will say this is one of my favorite spells just to use,

• 18:51

not only visually, but like for reasons you'll see later. But like it's a zoning tool. It's

• 18:56

like a mobile zoning tool. It's great for applying status effects because it's hitting

• 19:00

very rapidly. There's lots of different ways you can use this thing to your advantage.

• 19:05

I'm sorry. This one was so much fun to make. People aren't supposed to be using. I have

• 19:10

cooldowns. I'm sorry. I set my cooldowns to zero. So I'm launching like a whole bunch of them.

• 19:14

But I just really love the effects. I think it's so cool. It's just fun to figure out how to get

• 19:21

it to stick to the floor and make it actually kind of walk along, you know? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 19:26

Now we also have a little bit on the frost side. Let's talk about this ability. And this one is

• 19:35

a blizzard. Explain a little bit about blizzard, Keenan. Blizzard is a very complicated spell. I

• 19:46

have thought a lot about blizzard. It rains projectiles down that deal damage, but also does

• 19:53

a fairly frequent burst that applies shield stacks. It also has a little bit of mobility into

• 20:00

it, which is something we talked about quite a bit. We felt that it was important to

• 20:04

maintain some control over this ability, even though it's very powerful, just to give players

• 20:09

that maximal sense of agency as they are destroying the battlefield. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love the

• 20:17

visuals here as well, John. The decals on the ground with the frost and the impacting ice

• 20:24

shards. Now, is this talk to me a little bit about kind of how you create from a visual effects

• 20:30

perspective these individual elements and their reusability? You know, one of the things that's

• 20:37

really good about working here is that we are involved very early on and we can look at the

• 20:42

things that are going to be challenging from what design and engineering team want to build

• 20:48

from an effects perspective and then inform them on those things. And when we want really cool

• 20:54

frost zones all over very uneven terrain that they build out like cool displacements in the ground,

• 21:02

there's not a button for that. We have to go and work really closely with tech art and figure that

• 21:08

stuff out. And then how do you make sure that the particle systems can drive those decals and they

• 21:12

can be animated? So being part of that process very early on, working with the concept team to

• 21:20

identify what the challenges are going to be and then really being able to communicate with those

• 21:24

teams about how to accomplish it before it hits our desk is really powerful. Absolutely. I remember

• 21:32

when I showed you or when you showed me your first iteration, John, I was like, how does it look when

• 21:36

you move? And you were like, what? Yep, that is definitely one of the things that you are so very

• 21:42

good at, Keenan. You take whatever system we have designed and you find the one thing almost

• 21:50

immediately that we didn't account for. And I appreciate you for that because once we fix it,

• 21:55

it looks so good. Absolutely. It is a very difficult process kind of creating these

• 22:02

abilities in a way that obviously answers the call from a design perspective in the kits that

• 22:08

we want to create and the interconnectivity between those kits, but also establish what players want

• 22:14

to see out of a class fantasy. And the mage is a very near and dear to many people's hearts.

• 22:19

I know it is to mine as well. And there's just so much space here to create strong visual languages

• 22:26

around the different types of magics and elements that are utilized. It's a very strong part of the

• 22:34

Ashes of Creation class kits. So we have another ability called Cone of Cold. Talk to me a little

• 22:40

bit, Tratt, about Cone of Cold. Yep, ice spells have a tendency to be complicated. This is another

• 22:47

one. So this is a cone spell. I mean, it's pretty simple in that regard. Like you hit enemies in

• 22:52

front of you. You apply what is one of our elemental status effects called Chilled. It does,

• 22:58

as you would probably expect, it slows the target and it can stack for an increasing amount of slow

• 23:02

per stack you put on them. But if you might notice, you might notice that there are some

• 23:09

little crystals that it leaves on the ground there. And each one of those is a proximity ice

• 23:13

mine that if someone steps on, it will explode and apply additional stacks and damage. So it's

• 23:19

really good at creating area denial between your opponent and yourself. And if you force them

• 23:25

through it, then you can count on being able to escalate your status effects a little quicker.

• 23:30

Now, I've aggroed this monster. You guys will notice that it's not pathing towards me, but

• 23:35

that's because I want to show off some additional abilities. Excuse me, that require a target. So,

• 23:46

Lightning Strike. Talk to me about what Lightning Strike does. Sure, this one's a little more

• 23:53

straightforward. It's kind of one of your bread and butter single target abilities.

• 23:58

You can charge it for varying degrees of efficacy. So you can either release it really soon to apply

• 24:04

stacks quickly of the electrified status effect in the lightning category, or you can charge it up

• 24:10

longer and do more damage. So as I guess I'll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about what

• 24:17

you might be noticing on the icons on these enemies. But once you build 10 stacks of electric

• 24:24

electrified on the target, you'll notice that they'll get another icon on them. And that is the

• 24:30

shocked status effect. And what that means is that when you hit them with damage, once that thing is

• 24:35

applied, it will consume electrified stacks with each hit you do to them while that's active to do

• 24:42

or proc additional damage. So I'll show that here. You can see that electrified gets applied.

• 24:50

You can see that electrified gets applied.

• 24:55

But one thing also that is interesting is this elemental empowerment. Talk to me a little bit

• 25:01

about elemental empowerment. Yep, so you might be wondering, well, how am I going to get all

• 25:07

the way to the number of status effects I need if my abilities are on cooldown and, you know,

• 25:12

I need 10 of them to get there? Well, the one combo is, or well, your weapon combo in general

• 25:18

on the mage is very good at doing so because it will take the elements of the last spell you cast

• 25:23

and for about a five second period or so apply that element in satisfied applications to the

• 25:30

enemy as you're attacking them. So you might see that happening here. So let's show off a little

• 25:35

bit of that interaction after I kill this guy real quick. And the next one and how promotions

• 25:47

work on those types of status conditions. So what's a good promotion effect that I can do

• 25:51

between electricity and frost right now? Usually I like to stick with frost first. So I'll open with,

• 25:59

do we want to show frostbolt? Yeah, yeah, let's do that. So this is a single target projectile

• 26:04

attack that applies two stacks of chilled to the enemy. And then after that hit him with a few wand

• 26:08

attacks. Now you'll see that you've gotten a frozen status effect on him and then he timed

• 26:15

that really well right there. But like in that very last frame, you'll see that he hit him with

• 26:19

an light, a lightning effect, which triggers the shattus. It's not even a condition. It's just a

• 26:25

reaction. And that just triggers a bunch of damage. So that's a good way to get your burst damage. If

• 26:31

you're rotating your spells and your elements the correct way. Yeah, that's super cool. Very cool.

• 26:39

Yeah, that particular interaction is by far my favorite thing about this mage. Yeah, I like the

• 26:48

ability for a spellcaster or just any player with their archetype, having the option to kind of weave

• 26:55

in between those rotations and those spells and to create successful combinations within their kit

• 27:04

that you amplify the DPS or the status conditions or the control effects or, you know, whatever it

• 27:12

is your is your end goal. Having a a rotation that emphasizes your ability to succeed or fail

• 27:22

in those combos, I think is is compelling from a gameplay perspective.

• 27:28

Yeah, I agree. And like they really are intended to be rotational drivers and help you get

• 27:34

introduced to a kit that, you know, might otherwise feel like just a disparate set of spells that

• 27:39

don't really belong together. This is how just one way that we're really making them feel connected.

• 27:45

And it's not the only way. You'll see some other synergies that are a little bit more organic

• 27:49

with a few of these other spells that we have yet to get to. But that's kind of the crux of how

• 27:55

we're getting those rotational elements down. Now talk to me. I think your lightning just shattered

• 28:00

that for you. I know. Yeah, I timed it so that it would it would essentially hit the hit the target

• 28:07

while the frost application applied. I used another ability called chain lightning. Talk to me about

• 28:14

chain lightning. Yeah, that's it's pretty similar to lightning strike, except it's more of an AOE

• 28:23

role that it's filling. So you won't see it here because you're only attacking one target. But

• 28:27

if there were multiple targets, you would see lightning branch off from the main target that

• 28:33

you have to nearby additional targets. So it's really good at applying its status effect in a

• 28:38

more AOE scenario, which we will also show you soon. Let me see if I can. Sorry, I spawned a few

• 28:44

more targets just to demonstrate that. Let me sleep them all. Talk to me a little bit about sleep.

• 28:51

Yes, this is an AOE CC that breaks on damage. It's great for like creating space and setting up a

• 28:56

window. But you can't just like DPS them down while they're sitting there weak. So it's kind of

• 29:03

to trade off. It's very good, especially if you're in a more organized group that knows to hold off

• 29:09

and like, you know, kind of control the battlefield without just throwing damage everywhere.

• 29:19

Yeah, that is super cool. But now, John, talk to me a little bit about

• 29:23

the ability for this lightning to kind of connect with these different points of collision.

• 29:32

So first, working with this combat team so early makes things like the idea that they want to be

• 29:40

super twitchy and, you know, rotate the player while they're casting it very obvious from the

• 29:46

start as a, you know, a huge challenge. So when we go about designing these systems,

• 29:54

we're looking for not only does it look good, but is it performant and, you know,

• 30:02

building out the systems that can look for all of the players, the ground,

• 30:07

collision objects like trees or rocks and not only like, collide them, but avoid them.

• 30:13

It's just super satisfying. Yeah, I totally agree. And that's one of the cool things, you know,

• 30:20

you were talking about like looking for that collision and and one thing I want to demonstrate

• 30:26

on that comment is let me see if I can find a good spot to showcase that here. Hold on one second.

• 30:33

Let me just spawn a little dude maybe right here ish. And then I'm going to go ahead and

• 30:41

I'm going to spawn a little dude here ish. And then, oh, actually, no, we got a friend.

• 30:46

We got a friend to use him to sleep right there. OK, and let me get behind this rock.

• 30:56

Oops, sorry, guys. I'll launch around this area here.

• 31:02

Oh, that looked so good. Did you guys see that arc? That was so cool. All hacks.

• 31:09

You can rotate while you're casting it. So we wanted to really pay attention to

• 31:14

that player agency that's been so important for the combat team. You know, if if you're

• 31:20

able to move and rotate and get out of the way and your effects suddenly disconnect from you

• 31:25

or don't feel like you're in control of them anymore, that just it doesn't look right.

• 31:28

And we really want it to look and feel interactive and fun. You know, we don't want you to turn the

• 31:33

effects off. We want you to enjoy it. I'm definitely not used to seeing such

• 31:38

like grounded lightning in games and especially. I am a mage player and bad lightning angers me.

• 31:48

So it was just not allowed. Like we had to do better. And it's still very much a work in progress,

• 31:56

but we are definitely on the right path and it's performant. And, you know, I think another aspect

• 32:02

of this that's really cool is you're looking at it as lightning right now, but the same system

• 32:08

that does lightning, does the ice crystals, does the air strike routes. There's all kinds of

• 32:15

different behaviors that these very performant systems can handle. Absolutely. All right. Next

• 32:22

up, we have Arcane Volley. What is Arcane Volley? This is a single target arcane spell. Unlike the

• 32:30

other ones we've shown you, this doesn't have any particular element associated with it. And it might

• 32:37

look a little underwhelming at first, but you can use this pretty quickly. It's on a two charge

• 32:42

cooldown and there is a particular synergy that we all like to use with it. If you haven't figured

• 32:48

it out, it's how it synergizes with the Shocked status effect. The Shocked status basically says

• 32:55

with each hit, it triggers additional damage and Arcane Volley is a perfect candidate for that

• 33:01

synergy. You know, I am going to make sure this guy's wings are good to go. I, Trad, I would love

• 33:09

for you and I'd perhaps swap places here and for you to walk us through some of these more elaborate

• 33:15

combinations. One thing that is really cool guys, I don't know, it was about a year ago or so,

• 33:20

we showed off this particular Thunderbolt gliding mount and we put a little bit more work, Jason's

• 33:29

been putting a little bit more work into the glide mechanic. And let's see if I can set myself up. I

• 33:37

want to fly you over to a little location, Trad, where you can demonstrate some of these combos.

• 33:45

So I think there's a plateau that's kind of near here. Let's see if we can do this.

• 33:48

Oh god. And we're doing it. Okay, so this is kind of the gliding distance that you can develop

• 33:56

a little bit with these gliding mounts. So there's some good amount of distance traveled,

• 34:00

I think. Oh my god, I pulled a little bit too many troops. Hold on, hold on.

• 34:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, wait, wait, let me fly back out. Reset. Reset. Let me reset.

• 34:09

Reset. All right, wait.

• 34:15

We're good. Let's just walk over, actually,

• 34:20

I'm gonna fly to his little safer spot. There we go. Oh, and he's T-posing. Don't mind him,

• 34:31

he's good. Just tell him to go away. Oh, and we got another one. And he died. Okay, we're good.

• 34:44

All right, Trad, let me just, uh, let me, hold on, my god, I hope I don't die.

• 34:51

All right, get ready, we're gonna swap over here. Why are there so many creeps on this hill?

• 34:54

Oh no. I'm sorry guys. Oh my gosh. Give me one second, let me just see if I can reset them. Okay,

• 35:02

there we go, we're good. We're good, we're good, we're good. They reset? They reset.

• 35:10

Nope, they're trying to path to me. They're very angry. Very angry. No, why won't they leash?

• 35:20

They have a super long leash radius. Okay, Trad, let us, let's you and I swap. What do you think?

• 35:27

You want to swap? And we'll do this over here? Yeah, good luck, Trad. Yeah, they will reset.

• 35:32

Yes, just a big AoE pull. All right, we're gonna swap. Give me one second.

• 35:41

And we are now swapped, or we're swapping, sorry, Trad, come on over.

• 35:45

And show us some of the magic in the combos.

• 35:58

All right, we are back. I'm gonna do my best to salvage this situation here.

• 36:03

Got a big pull. All right, so first I'm going to thin out this encounter a little bit. I'm going to

• 36:11

demonstrate one of the more single targets. I just want you to know, Trad, real quick, that

• 36:15

prior to you thinning out the herd there, that if it wasn't for my training all of those creeps,

• 36:20

you would not have had this spectacularly long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long,

• 36:27

long, long, that if it wasn't for my training all of those creeps, you would not have had this

• 36:35

spectacular opportunity to just showcase the sheer AoE potential in this. Oh, I see, I see.

• 36:40

We're skipping straight to that then. All right. And he can do it without the cooldowns too.

• 36:45

No pressure whatsoever. All right, no, let's set the cooldowns back. Yeah, you can do it.

• 36:50

Doing it live

• 36:52

Let's see first

• 36:54

So walk us through kind of what you're gonna use

• 36:57

So because this is gonna be a more of an AoE combo

• 37:00

I would say one of the better rotations for this is

• 37:04

Almost one of the more battle mage like rotations so that this is gonna be something you could almost expect from

• 37:10

Like maybe H fighter or something like that, you know, I'm gonna equip the great blade

• 37:15

So this is just to show that you know mages use non-conventional weapons and ashes of creation

• 37:22

We're gonna show that off soon, especially with what we showed you earlier the elemental empowerment

• 37:27

Well, this will actually apply to all things that you hit in your cleaving radius with the great sword

• 37:32

Oh here we go

• 37:53

No, oh

• 37:55

God I

• 37:57

Canceled my blizzard. I cancelled my blizzard. Oh, it's so good

• 38:03

Too many mobs dude. Yeah, we're good. We're good. Maybe they'll reset that now you're reset. You're good

• 38:11

Okay guys, I just had to set trad up to die like that I apologize I

• 38:17

Just wanted to just showcase that the mage is not a literal God

• 38:20

Like in many games that if you over pull and you bite off more than you can chew you're still gonna die. I

• 38:30

Love it

• 38:31

We can't ever get at the first try right? That would be a boring. No, that would be very boring

• 38:35

there's there's a there's a little bit of a you know a little bit of a

• 38:40

difficulty challenge here

• 38:42

Oh, you almost made it back this is nice not bad

• 38:49

Kind of like a little puzzle to get back in here. He did it pretty quick too. I get lost. Yeah

• 38:55

All right, let's see if we can get a little bit of a better setup here

• 38:59

All right. I'm gonna shelf the AoE one and go to the single target one and then we'll we'll do the AoE one again after that

• 39:06

All right. All right, so this is a little easier one. Here we go. You're

• 39:15

Gonna need your wand

• 39:24

Okay, yeah some big deeps there and that's because of the shatter

• 39:27

Oh

• 39:35

You slept the next one nice

• 39:42

I love that ball

• 39:44

Oh

• 39:54

You're making quick work of these trad not bad

• 39:57

Yep, so that's that's the single target rotation

• 40:00

I like a lot at least with this kit once you start introducing some of these other elements in here that we're not gonna show you

• 40:05

This time, but you'll get to see them eventually it really opens like a whole realm of possibilities

• 40:10

Actually, we could even try it on this one. This guy's got a lot of health

• 40:15

This guy takes a few rotations to bring down. Yeah, I've been really practiced on this one

• 40:19

Let's see how it goes and now Keenan talk to us a little bit about kind of the process that goes into

• 40:26

creating these

• 40:28

you know class kits for

• 40:30

Alpha 2 your strike team has been hard at work and kind of

• 40:34

Developing phase one and phase two of these what exactly goes into those phases?

• 40:38

well

• 40:41

It's this pretty much a three phase process phase one is very open-ended to be pretty much try everything under the Sun and we put

• 40:48

It together in every way we can imagine and we try to figure out what we like and don't like and iterate fast

• 40:53

Like we usually do playables like twice a week when we're in that phase

• 40:58

What you guys are seeing here is actually abilities that are in the process of passing phase two so they are approaching

• 41:05

Levels that where we are happy with how they play happy with how they look and

• 41:11

Some details may change over time. But generally speaking this is

• 41:15

What we're going for and from here, it would mostly just be like like polish and

• 41:22

Assets and just getting like external feedback and stuff like that

• 41:27

Very nice

• 41:28

Tried I liked your use of slumber there. You're in a precarious spot. Oh

• 41:35

God oh

• 41:37

My god, I am literally on the edge of my seat just watching this hoping you don't turn into ash. Oh

• 41:43

God

• 41:45

Brad oh

• 41:48

My gosh that was crazy, but chill I wanted to make it look close, you know, it's good for the uh-huh. Yeah

• 41:54

You know me too. That's when I die. It's because it's you know, yeah, I mean it's dramatic effect. Yeah, it's a great totally

• 42:03

All right. Should we set our health back up or do we have to wait for a region here?

• 42:06

You know you can set it. Yeah, you can you can negative nuke yourself. Dude the aggro range on these things

• 42:12

I see why you dagger everything. So you see what I mean? This is what I'm having to deal with right now

• 42:17

That's

• 42:24

Well done you see this audience utilize elements of the terrain to obstruct the pathing from the monster Wow

• 42:32

We're we have yet to stand up the right pathing

• 42:35

Oh, it's so good

• 42:43

This guy's a little boy though, he's not too bad

• 42:51

This is just more of like the single rotation kit. Yep, and you do not have to build

• 42:58

your mage

• 43:00

down this elemental path, right that's one of the the

• 43:03

Design elements of this kit is that there are a lot of different paths that you're able to take the mage down

• 43:10

not just the lightning and ice path or elementals talk to us a little bit about kind of the

• 43:15

Composition of abilities that are intended between utility defensive gap closers and mobility

• 43:21

DPS oriented one

• 43:24

Yeah, I mean that's kind of what we've been demonstrating a little bit with some of these other ones like this show has definitely saved me

• 43:30

more than a few times

• 43:32

slumber as well like a lot of

• 43:37

Defensive utility goes into the mage being able to sustain themselves, you know when they're having situations like this where you know

• 43:44

Detected by mobs and they weren't quite prepared for it. And I think that's really what rounds out the kit

• 43:50

For classes like this. It's not all about just

• 43:53

Dishing out DPS all the time. It's all it's really it really comes down to those like situational things and

• 43:58

Using those things intelligently to come out on top. Let's see if we can

• 44:05

Get an AoE encounter here

• 44:07

By the way, if you want it if you want to turn around trad you're able to you can do like one two and three just kind

• 44:12

Of in the middle just face directly into that dirt area there and just num num pad one two three and it'll spawn

• 44:19

Just right in front of you and just turn slightly. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. All right classic AoE encounter here. Let's go

• 44:25

And guys just to give you context here as trad's doing this again

• 44:30

We were taking a little bit of a direction here with this showcase. We wanted to kind of give you

• 44:34

Just how we do things from a combat arena perspective and development

• 44:39

Perspective and how we iterate as Keenan was talking about, you know

• 44:42

There are multiple iterations that occur during phase one development twice a week almost with that strike team

• 44:47

and they use arenas that are a little bit lower weight than the

• 44:51

Then Vera than the ashes of creation world and that's kind of the combat arena that has things like dummies and you know

• 44:58

Just a lot of different

• 45:01

Design oriented test subjects that are helpful. One of those is just spawning monsters as you need it

• 45:07

Yeah, one of our guiding theories is that the more iterations we can execute on the better the game will be so we're all about

• 45:15

Minimizing that time to iteration. Yeah, that's something that's also really important for us

• 45:19

when

• 45:21

You guys are iterating so quickly

• 45:23

You know, we want to make sure that the systems that are using that animation to really drive the effects

• 45:29

Don't break every four days because you guys decided to change it up

• 45:34

We really want to only address changes for you know major

• 45:38

Differences and how the ability functions so these systems are pretty robust

• 45:43

Yeah, and I noticed there trad when you were swinging with your your greatsword

• 45:47

You had that elemental is it elemental empowerment? I'm into empowerment

• 45:52

Yeah, that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier. Like it's not just the wand that interacts with these different

• 45:59

abilities different weapons have different synergies with class abilities which just

• 46:06

Introduces that extra level of depth, right? It's like, you know, how can I maximize the effect of this and you know?

• 46:12

It's like I'm trading in this case my my ranged potential for the ability to apply these status effects in a more a we regard

• 46:20

Which makes the greatsword a lot better for dealing with packs than the wand

• 46:25

And you know, sometimes you'll even be able to use either one based on the situation, right?

• 46:30

We'll allow players to swap their weapons based on

• 46:34

You know what? They are coming up against and it creates a lot of answers to different situations if you have the tools for it

• 46:40

Absolutely. Yeah, just to be clear the greatsword was dealing so much damage there because they were shocked exactly

• 46:47

Yeah, it's good. It's a good a we weapon, but by itself it's not it's not that good

• 46:52

It was really the shock that was making it feel so much damage. Yeah

• 46:56

Well, oh you got another little friend there. You'd probably put press for a couple times. You want to grab a couple more of those? I

• 47:03

Think we'll just put him to sleep good call. Um

• 47:10

Well

• 47:11

Guys as always, you know, this is a continued work in progress alpha 2 as you know is a big test period for us

• 47:19

a lot of the archetypes are going to be online to a significant level with a significant amount of

• 47:24

abilities that are going to be available to kind of test and

• 47:28

As part of our monthly showcases where we show you development in progress. This is our opportunity to collect feedback

• 47:35

On what you guys have seen Keenan. Do you have some questions that are most relevant?

• 47:39

For your teams with regards to the iteration and development of this combat that you'd like to posit to the community

• 47:47

Yeah, I would say there's there's three major things that I'm interested in gathering feedback on

• 47:52

and the first one stems from player agency, which is one of the things that we prioritize the most and so with in

• 48:00

the context of this kit what that looks like is

• 48:03

How people feel about the amount of mobility that it has during spells people may have noticed that the cleric was walking out of its

• 48:10

spells and canceling them

• 48:11

But this page can actually continue to cast they just have a slower movement speed. How do people feel about that?

• 48:15

How does it look?

• 48:18

The second thing I'm interested in is

• 48:20

how

• 48:23

The transition between spells is coming across does it look good? Does it look clunky? How do people feel about that?

• 48:30

And then finally the complexity of the kit are people pretty happy with these elemental interactions and how they

• 48:37

How they would think about them during combat or are they interested in something more complicated or less complicated?

• 48:43

Awesome and guys as always

• 48:49

Remember this is a work in progress. There is still iteration necessary

• 48:53

There's a lot of artwork that still outstanding and require second third fourth passes and polish

• 48:58

but we are showing you

• 49:00

You know everything as it is in development because we find that it's a very important

• 49:04

Interaction with the community to collect this type of feedback and get your guys's

• 49:08

Thoughts on the direction that we're taking because at the end of the day when we launch Ashes of creation

• 49:13

We want to make sure that we've had as much touchpoint with the community as possible so people don't go, what game is this?

• 49:19

Um, but with that being said John, Tradd, Keenan

• 49:24

I want to thank all three of you for joining me today and showcasing the hard work that you and the rest of the team

• 49:28

Have been putting towards developing this mage and the other archetypes

• 49:32

I know I speak for the community when I say thank you. You guys are doing an awesome job

• 49:37

Very excited to see this played by by players in alpha 2

• 49:41

And with that being said we will see you all

• 49:46

back on stream

• 49:47

Bye guys

• 49:58

Welcome back, um, we'll play the video in the background. It seems like most people enjoyed the showcase

• 50:05

Um, okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and show you guys

• 50:11

Oh, you're muted for me, I don't hear you

• 50:18

Whoops my bad

• 50:21

Okay, i'm good now. Yeah. Um, yeah, it looks like everyone enjoyed that

• 50:25

So, you know just to give you guys again, uh further context there

• 50:29

This was just showcasing, uh, the lightning and ice interactions on the abilities

• 50:33

There is a pipeline behind ability creation

• 50:36

There's still outstanding artwork on the visual effects side for the fire and earth spells that we're kind of working on

• 50:42

Um, we talked a little bit about in that showcase kind of our phases of development, uh for our different archetype classes

• 50:50

And there are phase one phase two phase three, uh, and

• 50:54

These were ready to kind of showcase and we wanted to get your guys's feedback on that

• 50:57

So look forward to disappointed in the fire steven

• 51:00

They fire they want to see I know fire in the future stay tuned

• 51:05

Absolutely. We don't want to show everything too. By the way, we want we want people to experience and play this as well

• 51:11

So we do have quite a few questions. So i'm going to try to power through some of these. Yeah

• 51:15

Um, one of the things was can we swap weapons in the middle of combat?

• 51:19

We saw that uh tried to get with the great sword a great blade versus the wand

• 51:24

But yeah, we've talked a little bit in the past and this was president alpha one as well

• 51:27

For those of you who played and those of you who watched

• 51:29

Um, you may not swap armor when you're in combat, but you may swap your weapons

• 51:35

Um, and you know, there's obviously a few reasons of why this can be important. Um, we're a

• 51:42

itemization agnostic class, uh design

• 51:45

Um, so players kind of equip with items that there are most necessary based on the adversary or the challenge that they're facing

• 51:54

And so we want that to be available for players to kind of swap with weapons

• 51:58

All right, and then there's a question regarding ball lightning. Does this charge? What what's it like when it's not charged up?

• 52:05

Versus charging it all the way up

• 52:08

Um, so ball lightning you cannot charge up. It's the arc lightning that you can charge up and

• 52:16

And that charge up is essentially

• 52:19

Additional time that's spent as a risk in exchange for additional dps when the execution occurs

• 52:25

right

• 52:27

And then there are folks wondering is there an underlying system for the skills and combat from the ue gameplay ability system?

• 52:34

Or is this a proprietary solution that we've created?

• 52:37

Yeah, this is a this is our our custom

• 52:40

Ability system that's been created at intrepid

• 52:44

Adam and kenan and mike have had a significant hand in creating that

• 52:50

You know, there is functionality that we need to occur in our ability system

• 52:54

That's not capable of being done through what's natively available through unreal engine

• 52:59

And so as a result many of our systems that we utilize in ashes of creations

• 53:04

Are made custom in-house in order to better facilitate our needs

• 53:09

And then folks are wondering about foliage as it seems like it could hide your character from your own camera. Can you uh,

• 53:17

Can it do something like turn transparent to you so you could lose your own character?

• 53:21

Yeah, those lose yourself in the grass. Absolutely. Those are those are kind of um, uh, little

• 53:28

Higher fidelity types of polish that we get around to when we're out of the guts of building, you know core systems and

• 53:36

Abilities and archetypes so, you know part of watching our game in development is understanding that

• 53:43

A lot of the quality of life or or polish oriented features that you would typically see in a launched game are not yet

• 53:49

Worked on from our perspective. We're very much still on the on the core aspects of our feature development

• 53:56

and um on our archetype and class designs

• 54:00

And then the next one here, I knew this was going to come up which is action versus tab basic attacks when using the one

• 54:06

How does it work?

• 54:08

And just I guess in general

• 54:10

This is everyone was saying that this looks more tab targeted versus like hybrid. So they're wondering. Yeah

• 54:16

Um, what's our yeah, it's you know, it's important

• 54:20

It's important to note

• 54:22

That when we talk about ashes of creation's hybrid

• 54:26

combat designs

• 54:28

You have abilities that are skill shot oriented abilities the cone of cold the blizzard pbaoe

• 54:35

the placed template aoe's the

• 54:38

Directional line attacks that are not predicated on a target and then we also have a mixture of abilities that require targets

• 54:45

Um, we have two alternate modes of camera settings. We have the action reticle based camera setting

• 54:52

which utilizes a soft lock featuring mechanic, um that

• 54:57

That allows the player to utilize their tab targeted orient abilities

• 55:01

But then also gives them an additional fidelity from an action camera perspective when they're utilizing

• 55:07

a positional based or directional based

• 55:09

Uh template type attacks as well. So, um our desire has always and continues to be

• 55:16

How we can create a mixture of tab target abilities and skill shot oriented positional directional based ability usage

• 55:24

And make something cohesive in that design and I think

• 55:28

That what we're achieving with that regard may not fully, you know feel action oriented may not feel like an action oriented game

• 55:35

But we've always intended to be more

• 55:37

Uh hybrid oriented leaning towards tab target

• 55:41

So you're going to see a mixture of abilities that require the targets and that don't and then you're going to have an option

• 55:45

As the player's perspective to utilize an action action camera mode, which which utilizes a soft target lock feature and our reticle

• 55:55

All right

• 55:56

Um, and then folks are wondering can I and then real quick sorry just to touch on the basic attack comment there

• 56:03

So when you have your weapon and you utilize a basic attack you can blind fire that weapon if it has a projectile

• 56:09

Associated with it without having to have a target in addition if your reticle in action camera mode is over a target

• 56:16

You will have a soft target lock and projectiles will

• 56:20

Home to that target if within the right angle of direction just to answer specifically the question about um, basic attacks

• 56:27

Yeah, and to verify like or to clarify. Um

• 56:30

Um when he's talking about a like ground target aoe is being like

• 56:35

Like skill shots a lot of them are I don't know if you've played

• 56:38

A lot of people have played a variety of games

• 56:39

But a lot of the times you can play something and then it goes in that spot

• 56:42

So you have to there are abilities that are like that where you have to place them and creatures move then you know

• 56:47

So there is some skill element to it

• 56:50

Absolutely, like, you know having to fire at the right target

• 56:53

But it's trying to predict where the targets are going to be to some extent

• 56:56

Yeah, so not moving that makes it easy, I suppose

• 56:59

So you have to pick the order in which you're putting them in

• 57:01

Um, and then the follow-up question to this is um, can I be a fire mage only or a frost mage only or a lightning mage?

• 57:08

Only or will I always have to have some combination of these elements?

• 57:13

So within the elements themselves there are combos that can be

• 57:18

Leveraged for example you were seeing there in the ice bolt and the example of the elemental empowerment on the wand ability

• 57:24

When the elemental empowerment assumes for your wand attacks the last used element for a number of seconds after that

• 57:31

Spell was used. So in this example, I use a um, uh frost bolt

• 57:36

Which is an ice element and that applies stacks of chill to the target, right?

• 57:41

And now chill has the ability when additional stacks of chill from another source are applied to

• 57:48

Promote into a frozen state

• 57:50

And when a target's frozen they're susceptible to the shattered effect and shattered effect can be

• 57:56

Utilized against a frozen target by an electrical attack. So you saw you saw there

• 58:05

Excuse me, you saw there that I ice bolted to apply stacks of chill

• 58:09

I then followed up with my elemental empowered wand attacks that

• 58:13

Added additional chill stacks which created the frozen condition on the target

• 58:17

They couldn't move and then before that frozen condition subsided

• 58:21

I used my arc lightning in order to cause the shattered effect

• 58:25

so

• 58:26

you know there are

• 58:28

Abilities and ways by which in within a particular element you you can create those promotions

• 58:35

But you know obviously when building your class kit you want to take into consideration what type of intricate?

• 58:41

Connections am I creating with my combos? And then in addition, how does that interact with groups that i'm going to interface with?

• 58:48

And other classes and archetypes that play off of the keyword interactions from my abilities as well

• 58:54

Because remember ashes of creation is a group centric group focused game

• 58:58

Which means that when you take into account all of these different types of tier status conditions

• 59:03

You need to take them with the uh with the grain of salt that it has to interact with the party

• 59:08

You're accustomed to playing with and so there's some synergy that needs to be kind of planned out there

• 59:14

The twitch server is having problems

• 59:18

Um, I just did a speed test and on my end i'm getting 20 up

• 59:21

But I think on the twitch server side, there's some weird stuff going on. Oh, no

• 59:26

Um, so there might have been a little bit of weirdness going on with the live stream

• 59:30

So we apologize for that everybody, but the video will have

• 59:34

The the deeds that steven mentioned if you want to re-watch that

• 59:38

Um, and then the next question here is how will line of sight work with abilities in pvp?

• 59:44

It's clean. It's cleared up now. Steven. Okay, got it. Sorry. I was just checking

• 59:49

How we'll say sorry. What was that last question? How will line of sight work with pvp abilities? Yeah

• 59:54

So, um one of one of the things we're looking into and you saw a little bit of this with the visual effects

• 1:00:00

Tech that was used around chain of chain lightning

• 1:00:04

Um is the ability to have projectiles path around corners?

• 1:00:08

Um, and the reason for that and the reason why I think that's interesting and we're going to explore that is that some abilities might have

• 1:00:17

indirect fire so if you have uh, let's say a archer or ranger who has

• 1:00:23

the ability to

• 1:00:25

Select a major fire

• 1:00:27

Um the ability to select a mage as their secondary class and they might want to augment a snipe ability

• 1:00:33

Uh in order to you know go around a corner like an arcane archer might have right?

• 1:00:39

those those interesting types of interactions I think play with the

• 1:00:45

uh the problem

• 1:00:46

Statement that sometimes we've had in gaming and combat where you can play around a corner and try to block line of sight

• 1:00:52

And play with that line of sight. Well some abilities might not care

• 1:00:56

About that line of sight they might care the distance to the target around the corner or the path that it's taking and if it's outside

• 1:01:04

That path is too long. It might not be able to reach them, of course

• 1:01:07

But if you're playing kitty corner with the uh with a player that who's on the opposite end of you

• 1:01:12

Um, you might need to look out for some abilities that are able to path to you

• 1:01:16

Uh that I think is something that's interesting and and I haven't seen used very much in the in in

• 1:01:23

in general combat mechanics for mmos

• 1:01:25

Um, and just to go back to the previous question to more more clarify

• 1:01:29

Um in regards to like if I want to only be a fire mage could I only be a fire mage?

• 1:01:33

We get that there's combos and things like that. Yes. Yeah, if you wanted to only so let me ask that

• 1:01:38

If you wanted to only focus on one particular element

• 1:01:42

This might reduce your horizontal application in the design of combat. However

• 1:01:48

Within one element there are plenty of options and synergies and combos

• 1:01:52

That will still make you relevant

• 1:01:57

All right, cool just clarifying um, and then at higher levels

• 1:02:01

How much will mana management matter to mage players? We didn't see a lot of that happening here. Yeah

• 1:02:06

Yeah, I know that we're not at the balance level of right in regards to mana, but yeah for folks who are curious

• 1:02:13

Um, what is the mana management going to look like for mage players? Well mana management I think um,

• 1:02:19

mana management I think um, not just for mage players

• 1:02:23

But for really every class is a relevant resource mechanic that they have to take into consideration when they're utilizing their rotations

• 1:02:33

And there are going to be abilities that will you know sap your mana faster than others and they're going

• 1:02:40

They're going to be situational

• 1:02:43

Now, um with that blanket statement of mana is always relevant

• 1:02:47

Uh, there is also going to be mechanics and or class synergies and abilities that you can spec into to help mitigate that

• 1:02:55

there's itemization that you can

• 1:02:58

Utilize from a set bonus perspective or certain types of weapons and tattoos that you can acquire

• 1:03:05

Um, there are certain enchantments that you can acquire that might reduce the cost of mana use that might increase your mana regeneration

• 1:03:12

That might increase your mana total pool

• 1:03:14

Um, you know, there are even specs that you can build towards if mana

• 1:03:19

Mana management is your mana management. Nice is your um is your issue, right?

• 1:03:25

um, so we want to make it a compelling case that you need to think about mana use because

• 1:03:31

Um, you know, you don't just want to go 100 all the time with no, you know downside to that

• 1:03:37

Uh, that's a very boring type of interaction

• 1:03:39

All right, and then we know we have a lot of new folks and we've answered this question before but in large-scale pvp

• 1:03:46

Situations with a lot of players. How are we going to handle particle effects and spell effects?

• 1:03:51

So that they're not overwhelming for people. Yeah, I think um, you know a lot of commentary I saw in the twitch chat around

• 1:03:59

These particular effects that you're seeing today

• 1:04:02

Is a good example of how in the past especially during alpha one

• 1:04:06

We talked about first passes and how art is always improving and our art is always moving forward

• 1:04:12

Here is an example where you where now you see some of these abilities are bit dialed back and they're now within kind of

• 1:04:19

The scope of what we would consider not to in your face and more amenable to

• 1:04:25

massive types of pvp situations or large amounts of players, but in addition we'll have uh,

• 1:04:32

Certain features from a scalability setting standpoint that will allow players to even further tone down

• 1:04:38

Both the bloom and brightness of these types of effects has also

• 1:04:42

In addition some of the elements and channels of those effects as well

• 1:04:46

But I think you guys will agree with me here that you know effects now are are

• 1:04:51

As opposed to where they were in alpha one

• 1:04:53

We've taken into account what people's feedback were although it was always the case

• 1:04:56

We were going to address them and we've implemented them in such a way where they're not going to be

• 1:05:00

We've implemented them in such a way where they're more conducive to large player battles

• 1:05:05

Yeah, you know we'll be testing sieges and stuff. So we'll we'll be keeping an eye on all of that

• 1:05:09

So don't worry and we'll take a lot of feedback into play

• 1:05:13

um, and I think one of the questions that keenan even asked was like

• 1:05:16

How are you feeling about the look and the visual quality of the class as well? So

• 1:05:21

We do we will have a thread up in regards to the mage archetype. It probably is already actually up right now

• 1:05:26

Um, so definitely head on over to the forums and provide us your feedback

• 1:05:31

Before we move off that subject real quick

• 1:05:33

I would like to say that visual effects, uh artists are very hard to come by they're one of the very

• 1:05:39

One of the more difficult. Um

• 1:05:42

Talents to acquire within the game industry

• 1:05:44

And I will say for those of you who are following our project

• 1:05:47

And who are excited about ashes of creation to come to fruition and you really want those visuals to look strong and good

• 1:05:53

Don't be afraid to become a de facto recruiter for ashes of creation by going out there and finding your favorite types of visual

• 1:06:01

Effects you've seen in games and messaging those people on a twitter on a linkedin and saying hey ashes of creation is hiring intrepid studios

• 1:06:09

Is hiring for visual effects artists and we want the top tier visual effects artists in this industry

• 1:06:14

Because we're building a top tier mmorpg and we need that talent

• 1:06:18

So our visual effects team is growing along with a lot of teams at intrepid studios

• 1:06:22

And you guys can be part of helping us acquire that talent by helping evangelize for ashes of creation out in those communities

• 1:06:30

Yeah, and our wonderful social media manager peter is constantly posting those things

• 1:06:35

So I think we we have something up right now. If you want to go check out our social channels

• 1:06:39

Scroll a little bit you'll find our promotion for our job applications. So definitely definitely send people our way

• 1:06:46

We're trying our best to to get the voices out there, but it always does help whenever there's a little amplification

• 1:06:52

Or if you know people personally, that's always helpful as well. Oh, yeah, we're keeping an eye out

• 1:06:57

I know that there's been a lot of layoffs which we extend our hearts

• 1:07:01

Oh, yes, who have had to deal with that

• 1:07:03

Um as someone who has been part of that and survived many layoffs

• 1:07:08

I think like it is definitely not an easy thing to go through on either side whether you survive it or you are let go

• 1:07:14

But we are definitely keeping our eye out for good talent and we appreciate we see all the messages you guys send us when you're like

• 1:07:19

Hey, check out this person. They just got laid off. So, um, we are reaching out to folks who

• 1:07:24

We feel would be good fits for intrepid studios

• 1:07:28

Yeah

• 1:07:29

And with that we'll head on up to our art update unless you have anything else you would like

• 1:07:35

To touch base on steven in regards to the mage

• 1:07:38

No, I don't think so

• 1:07:40

No, I don't think so. Of course as always the reason we do these demonstrations and the reasons why we show you

• 1:07:47

Our works in progress is to collect feedback and get your guys's thoughts on what you saw today

• 1:07:51

Keenan gave some great examples of questions and focus areas that we want you to opine on but um, you know

• 1:07:58

Feel free make sure you're jumping on our forums the discord

• 1:08:01

Social media channels on twitter and youtube and facebook and giving us your thoughts on what you saw today

• 1:08:07

What did you like? What did you think could be better? What are examples from other games?

• 1:08:12

and other um

• 1:08:14

um

• 1:08:17

Mmo's that you've played that you enjoyed and and that we could potentially incorporate. Yeah, we want to hear it. I want to hear your feedback

• 1:08:25

All right moving on to character goodies our character artists. Well our artists in general are just um, awesome

Character Art Update

• 1:08:32

Uh, we've got some skeleton weapons

• 1:08:34

You know kind of look a little tarnished but um, you've probably seen some of our undead creatures and whatnot

• 1:08:41

And some of our skellies already, but they're working on some more weapons for them so that you can murder them

• 1:08:48

Or they can murder you whichever way it ends up going as we saw it can go both ways

• 1:08:54

Um, and also we've got the featherstone. Um expedition pack

• 1:08:58

That is now has a 3d model and we have a little

• 1:09:06

Turntable of that as well

• 1:09:09

Looks great. Love this. Remember guys, um, you know on the uh

• 1:09:14

On the back slot. There's a few different options that you'll have on for the player in order to showcase a weapon

• 1:09:20

um accessory cape

• 1:09:23

Um this this one's a pretty cool accessory. Yeah, this is cosmetic

• 1:09:27

Uh a cosmetic one so it'll go over that whole slot

• 1:09:31

But there are other ones where you can swap out like the little pieces and details, which will be really cool

• 1:09:37

And then we've got the ward of the implacable

• 1:09:41

Now it has a 3d model as well

• 1:09:44

Looking awesome

• 1:09:46

I know

• 1:09:46

Yes, didn't necessarily like the feathers on this one, but I think it looks cool. What?

• 1:09:50

I I love the colors. I love the materials. I think that they did a great job with this set and uh,

• 1:09:59

And the faction and game that this represents from the npc perspective I think is super cool. Um,

• 1:10:05

Yeah, this is a this is a great set

• 1:10:08

It will definitely help us with in-game stuff and then we've got the godsinger garb

• 1:10:13

And we'll wrap things up and move on with our cows

• 1:10:19

Sorry

• 1:10:20

The cows

• 1:10:21

I know

• 1:10:22

Jinxy did such a good job with the cows and I told her I was like we need highland cows, you know those like long

• 1:10:27

Fluffy cows and she was like, oh

• 1:10:29

Yes, um, but she was she was directed to make some more regular cows

• 1:10:32

Yeah, is this one of the first kind of farm animal stuffs that we've seen? No, we've had a little duck

• 1:10:38

But yeah, that's kind of the first of the like livestock livestock that is available for people to kind of

• 1:10:45

Animal husbandry with on their freeholds and whatnot. Yeah, what's funny is it's just a cow and normally like we are so weird with our stuff

• 1:10:52

So i'm sure you're gonna see some weird deformities of cows in the future. Don't worry guys

• 1:10:57

We have some like more bull-esque looking creatures as well in the past

• 1:11:01

Um, and then I think I have a turntable

• 1:11:03

Of that. Yeah, here we go or we need the longhorn ones with the big long horns

• 1:11:10

I was tempted for those of you who are old fans of um, like ever quest

• 1:11:15

I was tempted to get catkins to do a little scene with us and if catkins is watching this right now

• 1:11:20

He'll know what i'm talking about

• 1:11:22

um

• 1:11:23

But he we had like a whole cow thing and you know one of our old company

• 1:11:28

Yeah, i'll have to send it to you steven and you'll be like, I think I saw it. Okay, you think you saw it?

• 1:11:35

It's pretty funny. I was like, oh we should have done a little thing, but maybe we'll go with future cows

• 1:11:40

And then last minute, uh, jinxy was like I finished the sheep too. I want to show them and so

• 1:11:45

Oh, I love the sheep. They're so cool. I love their horns

• 1:11:52

Look at that

• 1:11:54

I love their horns. Look at the sheep

• 1:12:01

They're wool. I can't wait to shear them for some wool

• 1:12:06

Yeah, they'll probably make some cool clothes we need some interesting

• 1:12:10

sheep

• 1:12:12

wooled clothes

• 1:12:14

I was thinking, you know part of like the freehold slash animal husbandry design when you've domesticated animals and you're like processing them for their

• 1:12:22

um for their materials and whatnot it would be a really cool idea from a narrative perspective if

• 1:12:28

Occasionally your property and the things that you've done on that property

• 1:12:34

Have an opportunity to spur a random quest where one of the sheep breaks out of the pen and you need to go

• 1:12:40

Get the the sheep back and where is that sheep? And what did the sheep get into?

• 1:12:45

I mean those are great predicates, you know as someone who has grown up around like farm animals

• 1:12:50

They do escape sometimes I know one of your friend's posts will like

• 1:12:55

rot and like fall over and then they're like

• 1:12:58

What's over here and then they start walking across the street and then you're like having to chase them and get them back in

• 1:13:04

it is uh

• 1:13:05

It is wild times

• 1:13:07

Um, but yeah, so that is our character art

Studio Update

• 1:13:10

We're gonna go on to our q a and I oh actually studio update first

• 1:13:15

So steven if you want to talk a little bit about um, what's going on on the studio front?

• 1:13:21

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, we are finishing up

• 1:13:25

Our sprint next week and we'll be in our hardening week prior to our next sprint

• 1:13:29

We have had some really successful hires over the course of uh, april

• 1:13:34

We brought on a principal animator a lead technical animator

• 1:13:38

A couple of visual effects artists, uh some audio programmers and designers

• 1:13:44

Um, there's been a big month for hires. Um, as you guys know and as we've been posting we're we're stepping up hiring this

• 1:13:53

year again, um, so

• 1:13:55

A lot of success there stacy cameron

• 1:13:59

John and madori have been doing a great job on the hr side with facilitating those things

• 1:14:04

um

• 1:14:06

we had our uh,

• 1:14:08

Bring your kids to to work day. Uh was it yesterday a day before I think it was yesterday

• 1:14:14

There's a lot going on yesterday

• 1:14:17

But uh that was also happening

• 1:14:19

There's just a bunch of kids here at the studio and I saw that there was some really cool like color books of our

• 1:14:26

Characters that they were coloring in that was really cool to see those characters made some of those pieces for them

• 1:14:32

And so yeah, that was awesome. Um, but yeah, things are going really good at the studio

• 1:14:37

You know lots of lots of fun stuff

• 1:14:40

Yeah

• 1:14:41

And you know, we have a lot of more things coming up in the future

• 1:14:44

We're excited about and so we can't wait for you guys to see that and like steven said we are hiring

• 1:14:48

So please please send folks our way. We're trying to fill a lot of roles here so that we can continue

• 1:14:54

Making lots of good progress is the goal

• 1:14:58

Um so that you can have alpha 2 faster. We know what you guys want. We're working towards it. Yes

• 1:15:03

Um, so moving on to q a I'll just play the video again in the background. So you have something visually compelling whilst we talk

Outro and Q&A

• 1:15:10

We're not that visually compelling

• 1:15:13

I mean we're still on the screen. I I definitely i'll speak for myself. I'm not that visually compelling

• 1:15:18

I mean, I think people would prefer to see the mage over looking at us

• 1:15:22

um

• 1:15:23

The first question here is from bliz

• 1:15:25

Over on our forums and the question is about dungeons to ourselves

• 1:15:29

How many dungeons will a party of adventurers have to access when they meet up each evening?

• 1:15:36

In other words, we will intentionally or will it be?

• 1:15:39

Intentionally rare to find level appropriate dungeons content that is not already engaged by others. I think the concern here is more that

• 1:15:47

Uh because there's a lot of contested content

• 1:15:50

Will there be enough content for everybody or will there be cases where yeah, there's so much contestion that like they can't find

• 1:15:57

I think

• 1:15:58

so

• 1:15:59

To answer the question to begin with

• 1:16:02

We are purposefully

• 1:16:04

launching

• 1:16:06

with

• 1:16:07

Probably one of the most

• 1:16:11

Aggressive and ambitious

• 1:16:15

Content schedule, uh for an mmo at launch, um, I think

• 1:16:20

and uh, but to the second part

• 1:16:23

So the answer to that is yes

• 1:16:24

There's going to be a lot of different opportunities of content areas that you can participate in a lot of that's predicated on how the world

• 1:16:30

gets developed, uh that unlocks those zones, um, but

• 1:16:34

um

• 1:16:36

The second part of that question margaret to I think your point reading into the the purpose of that is when talking about like contestion

• 1:16:43

um

• 1:16:45

Is that not all content is equal okay, and and that's a very important

• 1:16:51

contextual point to this answer

• 1:16:53

Um, we are we purposefully create tiers of content areas

• 1:17:00

And we also create types of content areas and the tiers might relate to things like

• 1:17:07

better drop rates better respond rates better

• 1:17:14

Damage mitigation for your particular group composition

• 1:17:20

Better

• 1:17:22

Uh proximity to certain locations

• 1:17:25

Those create tiers of areas where content becomes more relevant or more desired, right?

• 1:17:31

on the second flip side of that is

• 1:17:34

there are um the

• 1:17:37

What you gain from those content areas that might be relevant for certain classes or certain groups more so than others

• 1:17:44

Um, so yes, you will have access to a lot of different content

• 1:17:48

Um, will the will the best or most relevant content that's

• 1:17:53

To you or your group always be available. No

• 1:17:57

And that is the element of competition

• 1:18:00

Right and if things don't feel competitive around what's best

• 1:18:07

Then you have removed an element of the satisfaction when you've acquired slash succeeded in

• 1:18:15

participating in that content and that is a fundamental core pillar

• 1:18:21

Behind what ash is attempting to achieve?

• 1:18:25

Through the distribution of content, but also the interaction of players

• 1:18:30

Um, and and I think that's an important concept that we cannot forget about when we think about

• 1:18:37

Um a question like this

• 1:18:40

All right

• 1:18:41

Next up. It was a long answer. Uh, hopefully you can get through a few more. I know let me know what you're cut off

• 1:18:48

Lithium wants to know about crafting skills

• 1:18:50

Are there any passive skills in crafting in the crafting tree that allow you to drop less material on depth?

• 1:18:59

Uh not in the crafting tree, but there are in the um

• 1:19:04

Material inventory bags that you can't acquire

• 1:19:08

um

• 1:19:09

in the crafting trees

• 1:19:11

There are within those professions abilities to augment things like drop rates and

• 1:19:18

gathering speeds and

• 1:19:21

Ability to survey stuff like that

• 1:19:23

um and tool creation whatnot, um, but uh, the

• 1:19:28

Dropping mechanics really more relate to uh your bags

• 1:19:34

And so there will be different benefits to bags. Yes, there's item

• 1:19:37

There's item progression as it relates to quality of bags types of bags and the materials. They're most used for

• 1:19:45

Um, some of them are more pvp oriented that can reduce significantly drop rates for pvp as a result of that progression

• 1:19:52

Um, you know, so there are there's a there's a complexity there

• 1:19:56

All right, and andewin wants to know about character role play effects player death means xp debt and losing materials

• 1:20:03

The rp community wants to know what are the in-game lore repercussions of revival upon death?

• 1:20:09

For example, does my character lose memory? Are they weaker? Does a period of time occur? But uh before revival

• 1:20:16

What happens when we are?

• 1:20:19

Come back. I had this I had we had this question yesterday in our pi meeting. Um, and

• 1:20:26

You know kind of

• 1:20:28

Oh

• 1:20:30

I'm, shoot. I hope you don't I hope you don't ban my account. Um, no, I was gonna say that uh,

• 1:20:36

I'll kind of give the same answer I gave there is you know

• 1:20:40

That question touches a little close to the metaphysical nature of the universe and ashes of creation

• 1:20:46

um

• 1:20:47

Uh, it's a difficult one for me to answer without revealing perhaps too much of that metaphysical nature

• 1:20:53

Uh, what I will say is that there is a spiritual element obviously to ashes of creation and its universe and story and the lore

• 1:21:02

Um, there is a spark there is a mortal coil that the character has which relates to kind of the interaction of

• 1:21:09

resurrection or revival

• 1:21:11

Uh and how it relates to the goddess of creation your existence within that universe as a mortal coil

• 1:21:17

Um, so there is lore there. It's just not what i'm comfortable commenting on prior to the game's launch

• 1:21:23

All right

• 1:21:25

You guys will have to find out

• 1:21:27

Uh and azara wants to know about caravans. Does a caravan stop moving or slow down when it's attacked?

• 1:21:34

Um, there are certain attacks that can slow the caravan but basic attacks will not slow a caravan. No

• 1:21:41

So you can try to trudge through while you're taking yeah, they're they're they're

• 1:21:44

That's correct. Yeah run

• 1:21:47

Well, and to that point right caravan speeds are built around character speeds so that the interaction and interval of

• 1:21:56

Of distance traveled by a caravan versus when players are attacking it is somewhat equitable

• 1:22:02

But there are certain types of items that you can use that can slow and or block caravans from a collision perspective

• 1:22:08

There are certain abilities and or status conditions that can get applied to caravans which reduce

• 1:22:13

There's damage that can be done to components of caravans which reduce speed

• 1:22:17

There's you know, there's lots of different ways to affect that

• 1:22:21

All right, and then kind of going back to the resurrection stuff, but this is from nick and they're wondering about

• 1:22:30

Items will we have items that let us resurrect other players? We know that there are certain

• 1:22:36

Archetypes that will allow that but will there ever be items that allow it as well?

• 1:22:44

Um

• 1:22:45

I'm

• 1:22:45

So sorry, I was I my mind actually went off in a totally different direction

• 1:22:50

I got stuck on that thought while you're asking the question and I missed the last half part of it. What was that?

• 1:22:54

What was it again? Will we have items that let us resurrect other players? Oh, yes. Yeah, there will be there will be

• 1:23:00

scrolls of resurrection available

• 1:23:02

Although there are is an element of resurrection that's important as it relates to experience debt

• 1:23:08

And being able to recover portions of that experience debt when utilizing higher grade resurrections that are only available from classes

• 1:23:15

And then there are lower grade resurrections which are can be granted through items like scrolls of resurrection

• 1:23:22

That that allows for parties who may not have access to a resurrection class

• 1:23:26

Be able to continue on but it will be at a deficit

• 1:23:29

All right, and then horrendous wants to know about tulnar lore

• 1:23:34

since we received an

• 1:23:36

Immortal soul or spark of life by going through the gateway from sanctus. How are the tulnar players able to respawn?

• 1:23:43

Since they didn't go through the same portal

• 1:23:47

Well, um

• 1:23:49

So again not to touch too much on the metaphysical nature here

• 1:23:55

The tulnar are descendants of the divine races

• 1:24:00

and

• 1:24:01

the tulnar sought refuge in an area of vera

• 1:24:06

That has some element of mystery around how that occurred which players will need to discover

• 1:24:13

And then there's the

• 1:24:15

connection the spark exists within the taller as well and how that spark exists within the taller

• 1:24:20

is something that

• 1:24:22

Players will be able to discover as they progress through the storylines and ashes

• 1:24:27

You will learn

• 1:24:30

Uh, this one is about gatherables from rufian and they want to know what are the differences between biome exclusive resources

• 1:24:38

For the

• 1:24:19

Um, and there is a connection the spark exists within the taller as well and how that spark exists within the taller

• 1:24:27

is something that

• 1:24:29

Players will be able to discover as they progress through the storylines and ashes

• 1:24:34

You will learn

• 1:24:36

Uh, this one is about gatherables from rufian and they want to know what are the differences between biome exclusive resources?

• 1:24:44

For example, do different ores give different resistances, etc? Um, yeah

• 1:24:51

There are associated with specific types of raw gatherables and resources that can be processed into refined materials

• 1:25:00

that grant different elements of benefit and or bonuses or um or uh,

• 1:25:07

Abilities uh to the different types of itemizations and or recipes that are available

• 1:25:16

So based on where that element can be found there might even be

• 1:25:20

relationships that are shared across different materials and or resources in those locations that share some of those

• 1:25:27

Characteristics that can be applied to items. So yes, it is it is specific to the material and it's even grade

• 1:25:33

Potentially that are that are used

• 1:25:35

Right and then send garden wants to know about gliding mounts which we kind of showed a little bit today

• 1:25:40

Will gliding mounts be momentum based or feature any speed boosting mechanics to make the experience more skill based and interactive?

• 1:25:49

Yeah, so an important thing to note is that um all mounts have the ability to acquire up to four abilities and skills

• 1:25:58

some of those skills will be uh,

• 1:26:00

You know propulsion based or speed based that can um enhance or increase or burst

• 1:26:07

Um different speeds some might be defensive based that would protect the rider and the mount for a short period of time

• 1:26:13

Some can be offensive

• 1:26:17

And that's part of what interfaces with the animal husbandry system and the ability to train those mounts

• 1:26:23

in order to

• 1:26:24

Unlock the use of those abilities

• 1:26:26

I think this is more of when you're gliding the skill in regards to the player like the skill of the player

• 1:26:34

Gliding the creature. Is it going to be more skill based in that regard and interactive?

• 1:26:38

Versus boom I hit a button i'm now gliding and I land, you know type of thing

• 1:26:43

Um, not not specifically probably what they're thinking about skill wise, but there is skill associated with it

• 1:26:50

Where's my launch point? Um, am I going to?

• 1:26:53

To you know hit this ledge that i'm trying to depth

• 1:26:58

You know gauge the depth for from my distance and calculate the speed on when do I use the abilities that I need to use?

• 1:27:05

um, you know do they uh

• 1:27:08

Am I misusing them at different times? So there is skill there. Um, so i'm not sure exactly

• 1:27:13

You know what type of skill they're referring to if not those okay

• 1:27:17

And then this one is from phantom max, which they wanted about removing player corruption

• 1:27:22

We talked about how experience removes corruption, but does gaining crafting experience specifically remove corruption?

• 1:27:29

Does gaining crafting experience remove corruption? Yes. So any experience that's gained by the player whether it be through

• 1:27:36

achievements in crafting or in adventuring or

• 1:27:43

Uh through other types of achievements

• 1:27:45

Um, all of that experience goes towards your adventuring class experience gained and then some experience can dual purpose

• 1:27:53

towards professions as well, so if I

• 1:27:56

reach an achievement in my crafting profession

• 1:28:00

And that grants me additional experience within that profession to rank up

• 1:28:05

it will also grant the same amount of experience over in my

• 1:28:09

um, uh adventuring level and to that point anytime you gain adventuring experience

• 1:28:16

um, you tick away at the corruption

• 1:28:19

And our last question is from hartison who wants to know about guild meta

• 1:28:25

And I apologize if i'm saying your name wrong. I think that's the first time that one's come up. Um

• 1:28:29

Will the meta for guilds be to just create alliances of smaller guilds with many skills?

• 1:28:36

Rather than larger guilds with less skills. Well, remember alliances are limited the number of guilds that can

• 1:28:44

participate in

• 1:28:45

An alliance is a limited number also achieving the ability even to launch an alliance

• 1:28:51

um is something that is uh is very late in the guild leveling process

• 1:28:57

um and uh

• 1:28:59

Uh, uh, essentially, you know what we're trying to create is an environment where there's a duality between

• 1:29:07

guilds that try to go towards population and then guilds that choose to forego population, um in exchange for

• 1:29:14

a a deeper access to

• 1:29:17

Passive skills that the players have access to will the meta be for many smaller guilds to to co-locate with each other

• 1:29:24

Yes, i'm sure that that will be utilized by

• 1:29:28

Um some number of smaller guilds in order to try to combat the numbers that other guilds might have access to

• 1:29:35

Um, I don't think that that's a bad thing

• 1:29:37

I don't necessarily know if that's a meta either because it's going to be beneficial for larger guilds

• 1:29:42

To be allied with smaller guilds that might have access to those passive abilities that they don't have access to

• 1:29:48

so what I think the meta will actually be is probably a

• 1:29:52

A mixture of large guild and small guilds that exist within the alliances so that they can overcome the types of challenges that occur

• 1:29:59

In objective based gameplay for events where you need the smaller guild with the passives to overcome the challenge rating

• 1:30:05

But you also need the numbers from the larger guilds in order to engage with the opponent at the choke points

• 1:30:10

I think the question is more that people feel that larger guilds will decide to go with more smaller guilds like

• 1:30:17

Let's say I have a guild of a thousand people normally i'll spread that out into a bunch of hundred people guilds

• 1:30:23

In order to get better benefits

• 1:30:24

I think is what they're trying to aim for versus like because there will be different benefits for small guilds versus larger guilds

• 1:30:32

Yeah, I mean, um is that what is going to happen will large

• 1:30:37

Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds?

• 1:30:45

Um, absolutely that will happen

• 1:30:47

And uh the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always

• 1:30:53

Is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate

• 1:30:57

um

• 1:30:58

Uh the use case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings

• 1:31:05

Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always it depends on what they're encountering

• 1:31:10

Um, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure. Okay

• 1:31:15

Cool and that wraps us up for today. Whoo. We made it to the end

• 1:31:20

And it was a long one

• 1:31:22

So thank you all for hanging in with us and we hope that you had fun and enjoyed this as well as getting like a little

• 1:31:28

sneak peek of the mage. We know that you want to see fire abilities. So maybe you'll see those in the future

• 1:31:34

Uh, and also we do want you to experience experience some of it in alpha 2

• 1:31:37

So we're not going to share everything all the time on here, but we do have some really fun updates for next month

• 1:31:42

So we hope that you will join us. We'll let you guys know whenever those things are coming up over on our social channels

• 1:31:49

Definitely recommend following us in all the places at Ashes of Creation. We're pretty active over there

• 1:31:55

Um, and then we also want to remind you that we do have our creative director community Q&A that is over on our

• 1:32:01

On our youtube channel if you didn't get to check that out. Steven took some time to he's kind of sick during it

• 1:32:06

He's kind of sick during it, but he did power through and answered a lot of great questions from our community members Chibi Bree

• 1:32:12

Richie, sh, and Simurg, so definitely check those out. And of course head on over to our forums. We want your feedback

• 1:32:20

There's already thread forums.ashesofcreation.com

• 1:32:23

In regards to the mage archetype

• 1:32:25

So definitely head over there answer those questions that Keenan had because they're going to be making some changes as we move forward

• 1:32:31

Especially before everyone gets to see it in alpha 2 and reminder that our cosmetic swap over is on May 10th at 11 a.m

• 1:32:38

So snag those and of course, we just want to thank you again for joining us

• 1:32:43

Thank you to John and Keenan and trad for being part of this stream as well as Steven. Appreciate your time. We know you busy

• 1:32:51

And we hope that you all

• 1:32:53

Had a really great time here

• 1:32:55

And we hope that you go for another month and are able to return to us with another fun stream

• 1:33:00

The VOD will be up here on Twitch. We'll also have it over on YouTube

• 1:33:04

We'll have the 4k version of the mage content as well. And then this video will go out

• 1:33:10

on Saturday with the full

• 1:33:13

And of course on the dev update make sure you leave us a comment

• 1:33:17

Subscribe to our channel and make sure your subscriptions are live so that we can see them

• 1:33:21

And you could potentially be spotlighted in our next one. And with that we will see you all next month for another update

• 1:33:28

Bye everyone. Thanks for joining. See ya

• 00:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our April development update for Ashes of Creation. We hope that

• 00:22

everyone has been having a magnificent month. And we hope that you know, you're excited

• 00:28

spring is in the air. I know I can't believe spring has come aka allergies. Soon to be summer too.

• 00:37

It's been it's been wild. I think we say this every single month or like you blink and a month

• 00:42

has gone by but I feel like an entire half a year has almost happened and I'm like how?

• 00:47

How? Well, these are the I mean, to be fair, these streams are very much like touchpoints.

• 00:53

Or excuse me, they're kind of like, you know, where I put my head back up and I say, Oh,

• 00:59

a month has gone by because each of the weeks you're just kind of in the thick of it. And you

• 01:02

don't really realize the passage of time except for these kind of staple dates where we talk with

• 01:08

the community and we have, you know, we know it's monthly. So we're like, Oh, okay, wait,

• 01:12

a month has gone by, you know, a moment of reflection. And you're always like, Wow, I don't

• 01:16

know if anyone ever takes a moment of reflection. But when you stop for a moment, you're like,

• 01:20

what have I done? Oh, that's a lot of things. For those of you who are new here, I'm just going to

• 01:25

quickly go over what you'll be seeing today and you can probably see it below. We are going to

• 01:31

be going over our quick reminders, our Mage update, our art update, studio update, and then

• 01:36

questions and answers from our forums that we always pull before. So Vaknar has gone through

• 01:41

them all and he also answers all of them for you if you didn't get your question answered here. A

• 01:47

lot of questions are repeat questions, so he goes through and answers them. And then he also, you

• 01:52

know, if your question didn't get answered, you can always ask it again in the future if it's one

• 01:56

that we have not asked before. But obviously, I'm Margaret Crone, I'm your Director of

• 02:00

Communications and with me as always is Stephen Sharif, our Creative Director. And before we get

• 02:07

things started, we'll quickly go over our YouTube comment that was selected. So we'll toss it over.

• 02:13

Toss it over. Today's one is from Timma200 and they want to know, people camping open world

• 02:20

dungeon areas was a huge problem in ESO. Please intrepid prevent this. And I don't know, Stephen,

• 02:25

if you have thoughts on how that is going to work out.

• 02:32

That is a good question. People camping open world dungeon areas. Well, you know, part of

• 02:40

Ashes of Creation that's a very important aspect is that there is a competitive nature to

• 02:46

the environments, the open world. We're a non-faction based game where your reputation

• 02:51

matters and the relationships that you build matter and those relationships can be competitive.

• 02:55

They can be adversarial. They can be cooperative and friendly. And camping really is a mechanism

• 03:02

in which players are spending time at a certain location in order to either continue control over

• 03:10

that location or to prevent others from having access. And so one of the ways that we kind of

• 03:16

allow certain systems to interact with that idea of camping is you have opportunities to initiate

• 03:25

things like guild wars where you can engage with those individuals. You can participate in the

• 03:31

flagging system where you can attempt to remove those individuals. You know, there are opportunities

• 03:36

for player friction to occur if people are doing things that are not received well by the community

• 03:44

or by your group of players or by others. And this is an opportunity to engage in the political

• 03:50

aspect of the game and the politics in an open world, sandbox oriented type of game design

• 03:58

is really the lifeblood of what keeps many players interested and invested in the outcome of those

• 04:06

types of political situations. So I would say that it's not necessarily a bad thing

• 04:14

when some group of players might try to extend or exert their type of influence to have control

• 04:22

over locations. That's an opportunity for player political engagement to occur. And, you know,

• 04:30

sometimes there are in our past experiences of playing MMOs, maybe an imbalance that can happen

• 04:36

between some groups that either grow too large or consolidate too much power. And it's difficult for

• 04:43

the server to push back against those individuals. I would say in the designs of Ashes of Creation,

• 04:48

we've created a lot of opportunity for smaller groups to affect change in the world and changes

• 04:54

that can be negatively affecting of larger groups. We have anti-zerg mechanics when it comes to

• 05:00

traveling across the world and being able to be at any singular location and any given point of time

• 05:06

or quickly by fast teleportation we don't have access to. That's one example. But also there

• 05:11

are open world objectives that can occur through things like guild wars and node wars. There are

• 05:16

also your home base of operations which are nodes that can be adversely affected should players do

• 05:20

something that are against their reputation. These are the types of interactions we want to occur.

• 05:26

And those points of friction are opportunities for players to get engaged. So, you know,

• 05:34

I would say it's difficult in an open world environment in a non-faction based game to kind

• 05:38

of prevent players from loitering in a particular dungeon or area to try to exert that control. But

• 05:44

there are a lot of opportunities system wise for players to push back against it.

• 05:50

All right. And, you know, if you want your comments spotlighted whenever we have our next

• 05:54

dev update, which is going to be the April one here, you can head on over to our YouTube and

• 05:59

make sure that you subscribe to us and you'll have to flag it so that we can see that because

• 06:04

if you don't have it public then we can't tell that you're subscribed. And then also leave a

• 06:09

comment on the YouTube channel and we will select at random a person. So, yeah, we're excited to see

• 06:16

more of those things. And with that I will go to quickly go through some of the other updates that

• 06:21

we've had. So first and foremost, we've got our dev discussion that we just put out this month. So

• 06:27

we hope that you have been enjoying that. We've also had an office hours for it, which if you

• 06:32

don't know what that is, Vaknar and Broshun have been amazing in doing these calls with us.

• 06:38

Calls with folks and you can pop on and give your feedback in more of a kind of chat setting versus

• 06:45

in a forum setting. It's a little different. I don't think I've seen a ton of people doing stuff

• 06:49

like that, but it's really cool and hopefully you enjoy it. But this was on average how long do you

• 06:53

prefer a dungeon playthrough to take. And our next one will be on the mage archetype. So we love your

• 06:59

feedback. You know we do. So keep tossing it our way. And of course, if you didn't catch it, Stephen

• 07:04

did a community Q&A with Chibi Bree from the Golden Feather, Richie SH, and some Murg from

• 07:10

Ash's Pathfinder. If you want to check that out, it's over on our YouTube channel. So we hope that

• 07:14

you like that and get some of your questions answered from the community. And of course,

• 07:19

we do have our cosmetic swap over that will be happening on May 10th at 11am Pacific. So if you'd

• 07:26

like to snag these, you can do so now. If you're not aware, these are all things that are going to

• 07:32

be NPCs, creatures, building things like that in our game. So you're really helping us build the

• 07:37

world as we are creating it. And of course, a reminder that we do have a content creator program

• 07:43

that is still taking applications. This is currently in application phase and we will be kind

• 07:48

of closing that as we get closer to the invitation phase, which will be closer to Alpha 2. So as you

• 07:53

start seeing that happen, you might know, you might get some Inklings in your bones of what's

• 07:58

what's what's to come. And with that, I'm going to toss it over to Steven to talk a little bit about

• 08:04

the Mage update before we showcase it. Yeah, absolutely. So as promised, and I know we've

• 08:11

been getting a little bit ahead kind of in what our future updates, monthly updates will include,

• 08:18

you guys been looking forward to the Alpha 2 Mage update for the last month. I know we talked about

• 08:24

that last month. This is an opportunity for you guys to see the direction that we've taken on some

• 08:30

of these abilities on the class kit for the mage. You're not going to see all of the abilities,

• 08:35

obviously, but you're going to see nine or ten abilities that relate to, you know,

• 08:43

utility spells, mobility spells, mainly DPS spells. And as it relates to kind of affecting

• 08:50

status conditions that have keyword interactions and can be promoted from like tier one to tier

• 08:55

two status conditions, mainly through elemental use of electrical type abilities and ice type

• 09:02

abilities. As is always very important, we are still a work in progress. We are still working

• 09:09

towards Alpha 2. This, excuse me, this demonstration was a little bit different than the ones we've

• 09:16

done in the past. This was a little bit more of a kind of test arena type of display. We go through

• 09:23

each of the abilities and we talk a little bit about them, but it's not going to be kind of a

• 09:29

run through of a location or an area or POI. Really, we're spawning some monsters, we're

• 09:35

showing the interactions between the abilities, and we are just kind of giving you a combat display.

• 09:40

And it's very important that you guys, when watching this, Keenan, who participated this,

• 09:45

asked a few questions that I think are very relevant to get kind of feedback on. So keep an

• 09:50

ear out for what those questions are and how they pertain, and we'll chat about them after

• 09:55

the demonstration. But enjoy these next 40 minutes of an early look at the Alpha 2 Mage update.

• 10:00

All right, see you when we get back.

• 10:15

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another live stream in the world of Vera. I am joined today

• 10:34

by three of our absolutely awesome developers. We have with us two regulars and one new face.

• 10:41

One of our engineers, obviously our glorious engineers, Keenan. How you doing, buddy?

• 10:46

Good. Thanks for asking.

• 10:48

Welcome, sir. Welcome back. It's just, let's see, last time you were on was for the tank,

• 10:53

I believe the tank showcase, right?

• 10:55

Yeah, that's correct.

• 10:56

Yeah. And then we also have, I think, as well from that showcase, one of our senior designers,

• 11:01

Mr. Trad. How you doing, buddy?

• 11:04

Doing good. Hello, everyone. Good to see everyone again.

• 11:06

And then we have a new face with us, one of our senior designers,

• 11:11

one of our visual effects artists, Mr. John. How you doing?

• 11:15

I'm doing really well, man. This is fun.

• 11:17

Yeah, this is fun. This is your first time on, right?

• 11:20

Yes, yes, it is.

• 11:21

And you have been doing a lot of work on the visual effects side. And today, I know many in

• 11:26

our audience have been anticipating this early work in progress look at the Alpha 2 Mage. And we

• 11:36

have, I'm sure already, the chat is ecstatic looking at the hot bars of abilities that we're

• 11:42

going to be looking at today. We're not going to go through all of them, but we are going to go

• 11:45

through, I believe, the electrical spells, some of the utilities and some of the frost abilities,

• 11:52

right, Tratt?

• 11:54

That's right. Yeah, we're going to be looking at a bit of an ice lightning mage. This will not be

• 11:59

the only elements that you'll see on the mage, but that's what we're going to be focused on today.

• 12:03

And just specifically some interactions between those elements and showing off how the elements

• 12:08

can be used together to create synergies.

• 12:10

Yes, and I know we've been talking about this, obviously, for a good amount of time and the way

• 12:14

that kind of the class kits synergize and work together. And you guys saw a little bit of that

• 12:19

with the tank demonstration between, I believe, two abilities had like a staggered to a knockdown

• 12:26

promotion. Is that right, Trent?

• 12:28

That's correct. Yeah, we're going to be diving a little bit deeper into that kind of stuff. You'll

• 12:32

see probably three or four different interactions within this kit, and that's just the start of it.

• 12:38

Cool. Now, we are in the Riverlands, of course, but we are... Where are we right now? I think we're at

• 12:45

the... This is like a... What is this place called? Is this the... This is the Hall of Judication,

• 12:53

which is... Was an Aelan, I guess, prison slash trial location that they kept criminals for court.

• 13:04

And we're not going to go inside this location because I think it's filled with some goblins

• 13:09

that might be a little bit beyond our pay grade. But outside, I think there are some more

• 13:15

friendly flowers, perhaps, that we can also play with and then maybe some rock monsters. But what

• 13:22

I want to do before we start there is I think it would be beneficial for us to first get kind of a

• 13:28

base on what each of these abilities do. I know that that was something that a lot of the players

• 13:33

really liked seeing before we actually get into some combat interactions. And then later, I'm going

• 13:39

to let trad show off some of the intricate combos when we kind of showcase the broader kit. But one

• 13:48

thing I want to tell the audience is that, you know, in our previous showcases, we've tended to

• 13:55

kind of showcase a little bit more gameplay oriented kind of walkthroughs of zones and areas

• 14:01

and have elements of different encounter designs and monsters and whatnot. Today, we're going to

• 14:07

really focus in on these individual abilities, their mechanics, and what it means for the broader

• 14:13

combat design of our archetypes in Ashes of Creation and hopefully get some good feedback

• 14:18

from the community on this direction. And I know Keenan has some questions that he wants to talk

• 14:23

about. And John, I know we're going to talk with him a little bit about kind of the next, I think,

• 14:28

next edge kind of technology that we're utilizing for some of our VFX and how these abilities

• 14:34

interact. So before we get started, let's go through these abilities one at a time. What's

• 14:40

our first one that we have here? This is something that I think we had in Alpha 1. This was our blink.

• 14:46

Is that right, Trad? Yep, this is one of the ones that we've brought back. This was definitely,

• 14:51

I would say, most of our favorite spells from Alpha 1. So we had to bring it back. Even the

• 14:55

visuals are just awesome. So yeah, anyone who played Alpha 1 should be pretty familiar with that.

• 15:01

I'm going to set my cooldowns to zero so I can show the abilities over and over again.

• 15:05

So this is the blink ability. And obviously, its purpose is to close the gap, to create a gap,

• 15:12

to reposition. Talk to me a little bit about the use case of a blink from the mage's kit perspective.

• 15:20

I mean, you covered it there. It's a gap opener, gap closer, whatever you want it to be. And

• 15:25

you know, we'll showcase some kind of that. We'll showcase that kind of gameplay and actual action

• 15:31

once we get to the encounter section of this stream. But you'll see that mages will probably

• 15:39

prefer to use this spell in different ways based on how you're speccing the mage. So if you are a

• 15:44

more ranged based classic mage, you'll most likely use this to create space to put between you and

• 15:51

your opponent. But like a more melee based mage might actually want to use this to get on their

• 15:56

opponent. Yes, to initiate. Absolutely. That feels like the way I would use it. And then after this,

• 16:03

we have a... Let me see. Before we get into the combat abilities, perhaps we use... You know,

• 16:10

actually, let me show the shield. Speaking of a combat mage, if you're in the middle of fighting,

• 16:16

talk to me a little bit about the shell. Yeah, this is a pretty classic mage spell that you've

• 16:23

probably seen before. It's just a big health shield. It absorbs a bunch of damage and it has

• 16:28

a duration. So usually you want to time it with when you're going to anticipate taking a bunch of

• 16:33

damage at once. And we'll show that off too in a little bit with some of our rotations that put

• 16:39

the mage in a little bit more danger for greater payoff. And this is kind of a short game. You can

• 16:44

see that the duration of the shell is one of the parameters that are augmented by some of our

• 16:54

augment abilities. So it could be potentially extended by an augment in the future. But it's

• 16:59

essentially short duration for those temporary hit points. Is that right? Kind of like if you're

• 17:03

stuck in a little bit of a bind. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the point of the duration. Like usually

• 17:09

these health shields can be pretty strong. And so timing that is part of the balance and also part

• 17:14

of the gameplay skill that comes into deciding when to use that and when to put it on cooldown.

• 17:21

And then let's show off this ball of lightning. Now, John, you have done a lot of work on the

• 17:28

tech side for VFX with regards to how lightning kind of interacts with surfaces from a sticky

• 17:34

surface perspective and just establishing what I think is a really cool even style guide and

• 17:42

shape language for this electricity. Talk to us a little bit about what it took to create this.

• 17:49

I think one of the things that helps set Ashes apart from an effects perspective is that we want

• 17:55

our effects to be dynamically generated. We want them to interact with the world. We want them to

• 17:59

feel like they are part of the combat. So when we come to wanting to work with something like

• 18:06

lightning, we actually want it to seek out different things in the world and stick to them.

• 18:12

We want it to feel like you are actually in control of that lightning, not just plastered on top.

• 18:18

So what we've been working on are kind of behavior systems where you model the behavior of the

• 18:24

lightning and how it should work. And then those systems get put into our effects and you get a

• 18:31

very consistent repetitive, not repetitive in its motion, but how it behaves result from it.

• 18:39

Yeah, I think it looks great. I love this ability too. And when we get into combat, you guys will

• 18:45

see kind of its use case. I will say this is one of my favorite spells just to use,

• 18:51

not only visually, but like for reasons you'll see later. But like it's a zoning tool. It's

• 18:56

like a mobile zoning tool. It's great for applying status effects because it's hitting

• 19:00

very rapidly. There's lots of different ways you can use this thing to your advantage.

• 19:05

I'm sorry. This one was so much fun to make. People aren't supposed to be using. I have

• 19:10

cooldowns. I'm sorry. I set my cooldowns to zero. So I'm launching like a whole bunch of them.

• 19:14

But I just really love the effects. I think it's so cool. It's just fun to figure out how to get

• 19:21

it to stick to the floor and make it actually kind of walk along, you know? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 19:26

Now we also have a little bit on the frost side. Let's talk about this ability. And this one is

• 19:35

a blizzard. Explain a little bit about blizzard, Keenan. Blizzard is a very complicated spell. I

• 19:46

have thought a lot about blizzard. It rains projectiles down that deal damage, but also does

• 19:53

a fairly frequent burst that applies shield stacks. It also has a little bit of mobility into

• 20:00

it, which is something we talked about quite a bit. We felt that it was important to

• 20:04

maintain some control over this ability, even though it's very powerful, just to give players

• 20:09

that maximal sense of agency as they are destroying the battlefield. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love the

• 20:17

visuals here as well, John. The decals on the ground with the frost and the impacting ice

• 20:24

shards. Now, is this talk to me a little bit about kind of how you create from a visual effects

• 20:30

perspective these individual elements and their reusability? You know, one of the things that's

• 20:37

really good about working here is that we are involved very early on and we can look at the

• 20:42

things that are going to be challenging from what design and engineering team want to build

• 20:48

from an effects perspective and then inform them on those things. And when we want really cool

• 20:54

frost zones all over very uneven terrain that they build out like cool displacements in the ground,

• 21:02

there's not a button for that. We have to go and work really closely with tech art and figure that

• 21:08

stuff out. And then how do you make sure that the particle systems can drive those decals and they

• 21:12

can be animated? So being part of that process very early on, working with the concept team to

• 21:20

identify what the challenges are going to be and then really being able to communicate with those

• 21:24

teams about how to accomplish it before it hits our desk is really powerful. Absolutely. I remember

• 21:32

when I showed you or when you showed me your first iteration, John, I was like, how does it look when

• 21:36

you move? And you were like, what? Yep, that is definitely one of the things that you are so very

• 21:42

good at, Keenan. You take whatever system we have designed and you find the one thing almost

• 21:50

immediately that we didn't account for. And I appreciate you for that because once we fix it,

• 21:55

it looks so good. Absolutely. It is a very difficult process kind of creating these

• 22:02

abilities in a way that obviously answers the call from a design perspective in the kits that

• 22:08

we want to create and the interconnectivity between those kits, but also establish what players want

• 22:14

to see out of a class fantasy. And the mage is a very near and dear to many people's hearts.

• 22:19

I know it is to mine as well. And there's just so much space here to create strong visual languages

• 22:26

around the different types of magics and elements that are utilized. It's a very strong part of the

• 22:34

Ashes of Creation class kits. So we have another ability called Cone of Cold. Talk to me a little

• 22:40

bit, Tratt, about Cone of Cold. Yep, ice spells have a tendency to be complicated. This is another

• 22:47

one. So this is a cone spell. I mean, it's pretty simple in that regard. Like you hit enemies in

• 22:52

front of you. You apply what is one of our elemental status effects called Chilled. It does,

• 22:58

as you would probably expect, it slows the target and it can stack for an increasing amount of slow

• 23:02

per stack you put on them. But if you might notice, you might notice that there are some

• 23:09

little crystals that it leaves on the ground there. And each one of those is a proximity ice

• 23:13

mine that if someone steps on, it will explode and apply additional stacks and damage. So it's

• 23:19

really good at creating area denial between your opponent and yourself. And if you force them

• 23:25

through it, then you can count on being able to escalate your status effects a little quicker.

• 23:30

Now, I've aggroed this monster. You guys will notice that it's not pathing towards me, but

• 23:35

that's because I want to show off some additional abilities. Excuse me, that require a target. So,

• 23:46

Lightning Strike. Talk to me about what Lightning Strike does. Sure, this one's a little more

• 23:53

straightforward. It's kind of one of your bread and butter single target abilities.

• 23:58

You can charge it for varying degrees of efficacy. So you can either release it really soon to apply

• 24:04

stacks quickly of the electrified status effect in the lightning category, or you can charge it up

• 24:10

longer and do more damage. So as I guess I'll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about what

• 24:17

you might be noticing on the icons on these enemies. But once you build 10 stacks of electric

• 24:24

electrified on the target, you'll notice that they'll get another icon on them. And that is the

• 24:30

shocked status effect. And what that means is that when you hit them with damage, once that thing is

• 24:35

applied, it will consume electrified stacks with each hit you do to them while that's active to do

• 24:42

or proc additional damage. So I'll show that here. You can see that electrified gets applied.

• 24:50

You can see that electrified gets applied.

• 24:55

But one thing also that is interesting is this elemental empowerment. Talk to me a little bit

• 25:01

about elemental empowerment. Yep, so you might be wondering, well, how am I going to get all

• 25:07

the way to the number of status effects I need if my abilities are on cooldown and, you know,

• 25:12

I need 10 of them to get there? Well, the one combo is, or well, your weapon combo in general

• 25:18

on the mage is very good at doing so because it will take the elements of the last spell you cast

• 25:23

and for about a five second period or so apply that element in satisfied applications to the

• 25:30

enemy as you're attacking them. So you might see that happening here. So let's show off a little

• 25:35

bit of that interaction after I kill this guy real quick. And the next one and how promotions

• 25:47

work on those types of status conditions. So what's a good promotion effect that I can do

• 25:51

between electricity and frost right now? Usually I like to stick with frost first. So I'll open with,

• 25:59

do we want to show frostbolt? Yeah, yeah, let's do that. So this is a single target projectile

• 26:04

attack that applies two stacks of chilled to the enemy. And then after that hit him with a few wand

• 26:08

attacks. Now you'll see that you've gotten a frozen status effect on him and then he timed

• 26:15

that really well right there. But like in that very last frame, you'll see that he hit him with

• 26:19

an light, a lightning effect, which triggers the shattus. It's not even a condition. It's just a

• 26:25

reaction. And that just triggers a bunch of damage. So that's a good way to get your burst damage. If

• 26:31

you're rotating your spells and your elements the correct way. Yeah, that's super cool. Very cool.

• 26:39

Yeah, that particular interaction is by far my favorite thing about this mage. Yeah, I like the

• 26:48

ability for a spellcaster or just any player with their archetype, having the option to kind of weave

• 26:55

in between those rotations and those spells and to create successful combinations within their kit

• 27:04

that you amplify the DPS or the status conditions or the control effects or, you know, whatever it

• 27:12

is your is your end goal. Having a a rotation that emphasizes your ability to succeed or fail

• 27:22

in those combos, I think is is compelling from a gameplay perspective.

• 27:28

Yeah, I agree. And like they really are intended to be rotational drivers and help you get

• 27:34

introduced to a kit that, you know, might otherwise feel like just a disparate set of spells that

• 27:39

don't really belong together. This is how just one way that we're really making them feel connected.

• 27:45

And it's not the only way. You'll see some other synergies that are a little bit more organic

• 27:49

with a few of these other spells that we have yet to get to. But that's kind of the crux of how

• 27:55

we're getting those rotational elements down. Now talk to me. I think your lightning just shattered

• 28:00

that for you. I know. Yeah, I timed it so that it would it would essentially hit the hit the target

• 28:07

while the frost application applied. I used another ability called chain lightning. Talk to me about

• 28:14

chain lightning. Yeah, that's it's pretty similar to lightning strike, except it's more of an AOE

• 28:23

role that it's filling. So you won't see it here because you're only attacking one target. But

• 28:27

if there were multiple targets, you would see lightning branch off from the main target that

• 28:33

you have to nearby additional targets. So it's really good at applying its status effect in a

• 28:38

more AOE scenario, which we will also show you soon. Let me see if I can. Sorry, I spawned a few

• 28:44

more targets just to demonstrate that. Let me sleep them all. Talk to me a little bit about sleep.

• 28:51

Yes, this is an AOE CC that breaks on damage. It's great for like creating space and setting up a

• 28:56

window. But you can't just like DPS them down while they're sitting there weak. So it's kind of

• 29:03

to trade off. It's very good, especially if you're in a more organized group that knows to hold off

• 29:09

and like, you know, kind of control the battlefield without just throwing damage everywhere.

• 29:19

Yeah, that is super cool. But now, John, talk to me a little bit about

• 29:23

the ability for this lightning to kind of connect with these different points of collision.

• 29:32

So first, working with this combat team so early makes things like the idea that they want to be

• 29:40

super twitchy and, you know, rotate the player while they're casting it very obvious from the

• 29:46

start as a, you know, a huge challenge. So when we go about designing these systems,

• 29:54

we're looking for not only does it look good, but is it performant and, you know,

• 30:02

building out the systems that can look for all of the players, the ground,

• 30:07

collision objects like trees or rocks and not only like, collide them, but avoid them.

• 30:13

It's just super satisfying. Yeah, I totally agree. And that's one of the cool things, you know,

• 30:20

you were talking about like looking for that collision and and one thing I want to demonstrate

• 30:26

on that comment is let me see if I can find a good spot to showcase that here. Hold on one second.

• 30:33

Let me just spawn a little dude maybe right here ish. And then I'm going to go ahead and

• 30:41

I'm going to spawn a little dude here ish. And then, oh, actually, no, we got a friend.

• 30:46

We got a friend to use him to sleep right there. OK, and let me get behind this rock.

• 30:56

Oops, sorry, guys. I'll launch around this area here.

• 31:02

Oh, that looked so good. Did you guys see that arc? That was so cool. All hacks.

• 31:09

You can rotate while you're casting it. So we wanted to really pay attention to

• 31:14

that player agency that's been so important for the combat team. You know, if if you're

• 31:20

able to move and rotate and get out of the way and your effects suddenly disconnect from you

• 31:25

or don't feel like you're in control of them anymore, that just it doesn't look right.

• 31:28

And we really want it to look and feel interactive and fun. You know, we don't want you to turn the

• 31:33

effects off. We want you to enjoy it. I'm definitely not used to seeing such

• 31:38

like grounded lightning in games and especially. I am a mage player and bad lightning angers me.

• 31:48

So it was just not allowed. Like we had to do better. And it's still very much a work in progress,

• 31:56

but we are definitely on the right path and it's performant. And, you know, I think another aspect

• 32:02

of this that's really cool is you're looking at it as lightning right now, but the same system

• 32:08

that does lightning, does the ice crystals, does the air strike routes. There's all kinds of

• 32:15

different behaviors that these very performant systems can handle. Absolutely. All right. Next

• 32:22

up, we have Arcane Volley. What is Arcane Volley? This is a single target arcane spell. Unlike the

• 32:30

other ones we've shown you, this doesn't have any particular element associated with it. And it might

• 32:37

look a little underwhelming at first, but you can use this pretty quickly. It's on a two charge

• 32:42

cooldown and there is a particular synergy that we all like to use with it. If you haven't figured

• 32:48

it out, it's how it synergizes with the Shocked status effect. The Shocked status basically says

• 32:55

with each hit, it triggers additional damage and Arcane Volley is a perfect candidate for that

• 33:01

synergy. You know, I am going to make sure this guy's wings are good to go. I, Trad, I would love

• 33:09

for you and I'd perhaps swap places here and for you to walk us through some of these more elaborate

• 33:15

combinations. One thing that is really cool guys, I don't know, it was about a year ago or so,

• 33:20

we showed off this particular Thunderbolt gliding mount and we put a little bit more work, Jason's

• 33:29

been putting a little bit more work into the glide mechanic. And let's see if I can set myself up. I

• 33:37

want to fly you over to a little location, Trad, where you can demonstrate some of these combos.

• 33:45

So I think there's a plateau that's kind of near here. Let's see if we can do this.

• 33:48

Oh god. And we're doing it. Okay, so this is kind of the gliding distance that you can develop

• 33:56

a little bit with these gliding mounts. So there's some good amount of distance traveled,

• 34:00

I think. Oh my god, I pulled a little bit too many troops. Hold on, hold on.

• 34:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, wait, wait, let me fly back out. Reset. Reset. Let me reset.

• 34:09

Reset. All right, wait.

• 34:15

We're good. Let's just walk over, actually,

• 34:20

I'm gonna fly to his little safer spot. There we go. Oh, and he's T-posing. Don't mind him,

• 34:31

he's good. Just tell him to go away. Oh, and we got another one. And he died. Okay, we're good.

• 34:44

All right, Trad, let me just, uh, let me, hold on, my god, I hope I don't die.

• 34:51

All right, get ready, we're gonna swap over here. Why are there so many creeps on this hill?

• 34:54

Oh no. I'm sorry guys. Oh my gosh. Give me one second, let me just see if I can reset them. Okay,

• 35:02

there we go, we're good. We're good, we're good, we're good. They reset? They reset.

• 35:10

Nope, they're trying to path to me. They're very angry. Very angry. No, why won't they leash?

• 35:20

They have a super long leash radius. Okay, Trad, let us, let's you and I swap. What do you think?

• 35:27

You want to swap? And we'll do this over here? Yeah, good luck, Trad. Yeah, they will reset.

• 35:32

Yes, just a big AoE pull. All right, we're gonna swap. Give me one second.

• 35:41

And we are now swapped, or we're swapping, sorry, Trad, come on over.

• 35:45

And show us some of the magic in the combos.

• 35:58

All right, we are back. I'm gonna do my best to salvage this situation here.

• 36:03

Got a big pull. All right, so first I'm going to thin out this encounter a little bit. I'm going to

• 36:11

demonstrate one of the more single targets. I just want you to know, Trad, real quick, that

• 36:15

prior to you thinning out the herd there, that if it wasn't for my training all of those creeps,

• 36:20

you would not have had this spectacularly long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long,

• 36:27

long, long, that if it wasn't for my training all of those creeps, you would not have had this

• 36:35

spectacular opportunity to just showcase the sheer AoE potential in this. Oh, I see, I see.

• 36:40

We're skipping straight to that then. All right. And he can do it without the cooldowns too.

• 36:45

No pressure whatsoever. All right, no, let's set the cooldowns back. Yeah, you can do it.

• 36:50

Doing it live

• 36:52

Let's see first

• 36:54

So walk us through kind of what you're gonna use

• 36:57

So because this is gonna be a more of an AoE combo

• 37:00

I would say one of the better rotations for this is

• 37:04

Almost one of the more battle mage like rotations so that this is gonna be something you could almost expect from

• 37:10

Like maybe H fighter or something like that, you know, I'm gonna equip the great blade

• 37:15

So this is just to show that you know mages use non-conventional weapons and ashes of creation

• 37:22

We're gonna show that off soon, especially with what we showed you earlier the elemental empowerment

• 37:27

Well, this will actually apply to all things that you hit in your cleaving radius with the great sword

• 37:32

Oh here we go

• 37:53

No, oh

• 37:55

God I

• 37:57

Canceled my blizzard. I cancelled my blizzard. Oh, it's so good

• 38:03

Too many mobs dude. Yeah, we're good. We're good. Maybe they'll reset that now you're reset. You're good

• 38:11

Okay guys, I just had to set trad up to die like that I apologize I

• 38:17

Just wanted to just showcase that the mage is not a literal God

• 38:20

Like in many games that if you over pull and you bite off more than you can chew you're still gonna die. I

• 38:30

Love it

• 38:31

We can't ever get at the first try right? That would be a boring. No, that would be very boring

• 38:35

there's there's a there's a little bit of a you know a little bit of a

• 38:40

difficulty challenge here

• 38:42

Oh, you almost made it back this is nice not bad

• 38:49

Kind of like a little puzzle to get back in here. He did it pretty quick too. I get lost. Yeah

• 38:55

All right, let's see if we can get a little bit of a better setup here

• 38:59

All right. I'm gonna shelf the AoE one and go to the single target one and then we'll we'll do the AoE one again after that

• 39:06

All right. All right, so this is a little easier one. Here we go. You're

• 39:15

Gonna need your wand

• 39:24

Okay, yeah some big deeps there and that's because of the shatter

• 39:27

Oh

• 39:35

You slept the next one nice

• 39:42

I love that ball

• 39:44

Oh

• 39:54

You're making quick work of these trad not bad

• 39:57

Yep, so that's that's the single target rotation

• 40:00

I like a lot at least with this kit once you start introducing some of these other elements in here that we're not gonna show you

• 40:05

This time, but you'll get to see them eventually it really opens like a whole realm of possibilities

• 40:10

Actually, we could even try it on this one. This guy's got a lot of health

• 40:15

This guy takes a few rotations to bring down. Yeah, I've been really practiced on this one

• 40:19

Let's see how it goes and now Keenan talk to us a little bit about kind of the process that goes into

• 40:26

creating these

• 40:28

you know class kits for

• 40:30

Alpha 2 your strike team has been hard at work and kind of

• 40:34

Developing phase one and phase two of these what exactly goes into those phases?

• 40:38

well

• 40:41

It's this pretty much a three phase process phase one is very open-ended to be pretty much try everything under the Sun and we put

• 40:48

It together in every way we can imagine and we try to figure out what we like and don't like and iterate fast

• 40:53

Like we usually do playables like twice a week when we're in that phase

• 40:58

What you guys are seeing here is actually abilities that are in the process of passing phase two so they are approaching

• 41:05

Levels that where we are happy with how they play happy with how they look and

• 41:11

Some details may change over time. But generally speaking this is

• 41:15

What we're going for and from here, it would mostly just be like like polish and

• 41:22

Assets and just getting like external feedback and stuff like that

• 41:27

Very nice

• 41:28

Tried I liked your use of slumber there. You're in a precarious spot. Oh

• 41:35

God oh

• 41:37

My god, I am literally on the edge of my seat just watching this hoping you don't turn into ash. Oh

• 41:43

God

• 41:45

Brad oh

• 41:48

My gosh that was crazy, but chill I wanted to make it look close, you know, it's good for the uh-huh. Yeah

• 41:54

You know me too. That's when I die. It's because it's you know, yeah, I mean it's dramatic effect. Yeah, it's a great totally

• 42:03

All right. Should we set our health back up or do we have to wait for a region here?

• 42:06

You know you can set it. Yeah, you can you can negative nuke yourself. Dude the aggro range on these things

• 42:12

I see why you dagger everything. So you see what I mean? This is what I'm having to deal with right now

• 42:17

That's

• 42:24

Well done you see this audience utilize elements of the terrain to obstruct the pathing from the monster Wow

• 42:32

We're we have yet to stand up the right pathing

• 42:35

Oh, it's so good

• 42:43

This guy's a little boy though, he's not too bad

• 42:51

This is just more of like the single rotation kit. Yep, and you do not have to build

• 42:58

your mage

• 43:00

down this elemental path, right that's one of the the

• 43:03

Design elements of this kit is that there are a lot of different paths that you're able to take the mage down

• 43:10

not just the lightning and ice path or elementals talk to us a little bit about kind of the

• 43:15

Composition of abilities that are intended between utility defensive gap closers and mobility

• 43:21

DPS oriented one

• 43:24

Yeah, I mean that's kind of what we've been demonstrating a little bit with some of these other ones like this show has definitely saved me

• 43:30

more than a few times

• 43:32

slumber as well like a lot of

• 43:37

Defensive utility goes into the mage being able to sustain themselves, you know when they're having situations like this where you know

• 43:44

Detected by mobs and they weren't quite prepared for it. And I think that's really what rounds out the kit

• 43:50

For classes like this. It's not all about just

• 43:53

Dishing out DPS all the time. It's all it's really it really comes down to those like situational things and

• 43:58

Using those things intelligently to come out on top. Let's see if we can

• 44:05

Get an AoE encounter here

• 44:07

By the way, if you want it if you want to turn around trad you're able to you can do like one two and three just kind

• 44:12

Of in the middle just face directly into that dirt area there and just num num pad one two three and it'll spawn

• 44:19

Just right in front of you and just turn slightly. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. All right classic AoE encounter here. Let's go

• 44:25

And guys just to give you context here as trad's doing this again

• 44:30

We were taking a little bit of a direction here with this showcase. We wanted to kind of give you

• 44:34

Just how we do things from a combat arena perspective and development

• 44:39

Perspective and how we iterate as Keenan was talking about, you know

• 44:42

There are multiple iterations that occur during phase one development twice a week almost with that strike team

• 44:47

and they use arenas that are a little bit lower weight than the

• 44:51

Then Vera than the ashes of creation world and that's kind of the combat arena that has things like dummies and you know

• 44:58

Just a lot of different

• 45:01

Design oriented test subjects that are helpful. One of those is just spawning monsters as you need it

• 45:07

Yeah, one of our guiding theories is that the more iterations we can execute on the better the game will be so we're all about

• 45:15

Minimizing that time to iteration. Yeah, that's something that's also really important for us

• 45:19

when

• 45:21

You guys are iterating so quickly

• 45:23

You know, we want to make sure that the systems that are using that animation to really drive the effects

• 45:29

Don't break every four days because you guys decided to change it up

• 45:34

We really want to only address changes for you know major

• 45:38

Differences and how the ability functions so these systems are pretty robust

• 45:43

Yeah, and I noticed there trad when you were swinging with your your greatsword

• 45:47

You had that elemental is it elemental empowerment? I'm into empowerment

• 45:52

Yeah, that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier. Like it's not just the wand that interacts with these different

• 45:59

abilities different weapons have different synergies with class abilities which just

• 46:06

Introduces that extra level of depth, right? It's like, you know, how can I maximize the effect of this and you know?

• 46:12

It's like I'm trading in this case my my ranged potential for the ability to apply these status effects in a more a we regard

• 46:20

Which makes the greatsword a lot better for dealing with packs than the wand

• 46:25

And you know, sometimes you'll even be able to use either one based on the situation, right?

• 46:30

We'll allow players to swap their weapons based on

• 46:34

You know what? They are coming up against and it creates a lot of answers to different situations if you have the tools for it

• 46:40

Absolutely. Yeah, just to be clear the greatsword was dealing so much damage there because they were shocked exactly

• 46:47

Yeah, it's good. It's a good a we weapon, but by itself it's not it's not that good

• 46:52

It was really the shock that was making it feel so much damage. Yeah

• 46:56

Well, oh you got another little friend there. You'd probably put press for a couple times. You want to grab a couple more of those? I

• 47:03

Think we'll just put him to sleep good call. Um

• 47:10

Well

• 47:11

Guys as always, you know, this is a continued work in progress alpha 2 as you know is a big test period for us

• 47:19

a lot of the archetypes are going to be online to a significant level with a significant amount of

• 47:24

abilities that are going to be available to kind of test and

• 47:28

As part of our monthly showcases where we show you development in progress. This is our opportunity to collect feedback

• 47:35

On what you guys have seen Keenan. Do you have some questions that are most relevant?

• 47:39

For your teams with regards to the iteration and development of this combat that you'd like to posit to the community

• 47:47

Yeah, I would say there's there's three major things that I'm interested in gathering feedback on

• 47:52

and the first one stems from player agency, which is one of the things that we prioritize the most and so with in

• 48:00

the context of this kit what that looks like is

• 48:03

How people feel about the amount of mobility that it has during spells people may have noticed that the cleric was walking out of its

• 48:10

spells and canceling them

• 48:11

But this page can actually continue to cast they just have a slower movement speed. How do people feel about that?

• 48:15

How does it look?

• 48:18

The second thing I'm interested in is

• 48:20

how

• 48:23

The transition between spells is coming across does it look good? Does it look clunky? How do people feel about that?

• 48:30

And then finally the complexity of the kit are people pretty happy with these elemental interactions and how they

• 48:37

How they would think about them during combat or are they interested in something more complicated or less complicated?

• 48:43

Awesome and guys as always

• 48:49

Remember this is a work in progress. There is still iteration necessary

• 48:53

There's a lot of artwork that still outstanding and require second third fourth passes and polish

• 48:58

but we are showing you

• 49:00

You know everything as it is in development because we find that it's a very important

• 49:04

Interaction with the community to collect this type of feedback and get your guys's

• 49:08

Thoughts on the direction that we're taking because at the end of the day when we launch Ashes of creation

• 49:13

We want to make sure that we've had as much touchpoint with the community as possible so people don't go, what game is this?

• 49:19

Um, but with that being said John, Tradd, Keenan

• 49:24

I want to thank all three of you for joining me today and showcasing the hard work that you and the rest of the team

• 49:28

Have been putting towards developing this mage and the other archetypes

• 49:32

I know I speak for the community when I say thank you. You guys are doing an awesome job

• 49:37

Very excited to see this played by by players in alpha 2

• 49:41

And with that being said we will see you all

• 49:46

back on stream

• 49:47

Bye guys

• 49:58

Welcome back, um, we'll play the video in the background. It seems like most people enjoyed the showcase

• 50:05

Um, okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and show you guys

• 50:11

Oh, you're muted for me, I don't hear you

• 50:18

Whoops my bad

• 50:21

Okay, i'm good now. Yeah. Um, yeah, it looks like everyone enjoyed that

• 50:25

So, you know just to give you guys again, uh further context there

• 50:29

This was just showcasing, uh, the lightning and ice interactions on the abilities

• 50:33

There is a pipeline behind ability creation

• 50:36

There's still outstanding artwork on the visual effects side for the fire and earth spells that we're kind of working on

• 50:42

Um, we talked a little bit about in that showcase kind of our phases of development, uh for our different archetype classes

• 50:50

And there are phase one phase two phase three, uh, and

• 50:54

These were ready to kind of showcase and we wanted to get your guys's feedback on that

• 50:57

So look forward to disappointed in the fire steven

• 51:00

They fire they want to see I know fire in the future stay tuned

• 51:05

Absolutely. We don't want to show everything too. By the way, we want we want people to experience and play this as well

• 51:11

So we do have quite a few questions. So i'm going to try to power through some of these. Yeah

• 51:15

Um, one of the things was can we swap weapons in the middle of combat?

• 51:19

We saw that uh tried to get with the great sword a great blade versus the wand

• 51:24

But yeah, we've talked a little bit in the past and this was president alpha one as well

• 51:27

For those of you who played and those of you who watched

• 51:29

Um, you may not swap armor when you're in combat, but you may swap your weapons

• 51:35

Um, and you know, there's obviously a few reasons of why this can be important. Um, we're a

• 51:42

itemization agnostic class, uh design

• 51:45

Um, so players kind of equip with items that there are most necessary based on the adversary or the challenge that they're facing

• 51:54

And so we want that to be available for players to kind of swap with weapons

• 51:58

All right, and then there's a question regarding ball lightning. Does this charge? What what's it like when it's not charged up?

• 52:05

Versus charging it all the way up

• 52:08

Um, so ball lightning you cannot charge up. It's the arc lightning that you can charge up and

• 52:16

And that charge up is essentially

• 52:19

Additional time that's spent as a risk in exchange for additional dps when the execution occurs

• 52:25

right

• 52:27

And then there are folks wondering is there an underlying system for the skills and combat from the ue gameplay ability system?

• 52:34

Or is this a proprietary solution that we've created?

• 52:37

Yeah, this is a this is our our custom

• 52:40

Ability system that's been created at intrepid

• 52:44

Adam and kenan and mike have had a significant hand in creating that

• 52:50

You know, there is functionality that we need to occur in our ability system

• 52:54

That's not capable of being done through what's natively available through unreal engine

• 52:59

And so as a result many of our systems that we utilize in ashes of creations

• 53:04

Are made custom in-house in order to better facilitate our needs

• 53:09

And then folks are wondering about foliage as it seems like it could hide your character from your own camera. Can you uh,

• 53:17

Can it do something like turn transparent to you so you could lose your own character?

• 53:21

Yeah, those lose yourself in the grass. Absolutely. Those are those are kind of um, uh, little

• 53:28

Higher fidelity types of polish that we get around to when we're out of the guts of building, you know core systems and

• 53:36

Abilities and archetypes so, you know part of watching our game in development is understanding that

• 53:43

A lot of the quality of life or or polish oriented features that you would typically see in a launched game are not yet

• 53:49

Worked on from our perspective. We're very much still on the on the core aspects of our feature development

• 53:56

and um on our archetype and class designs

• 54:00

And then the next one here, I knew this was going to come up which is action versus tab basic attacks when using the one

• 54:06

How does it work?

• 54:08

And just I guess in general

• 54:10

This is everyone was saying that this looks more tab targeted versus like hybrid. So they're wondering. Yeah

• 54:16

Um, what's our yeah, it's you know, it's important

• 54:20

It's important to note

• 54:22

That when we talk about ashes of creation's hybrid

• 54:26

combat designs

• 54:28

You have abilities that are skill shot oriented abilities the cone of cold the blizzard pbaoe

• 54:35

the placed template aoe's the

• 54:38

Directional line attacks that are not predicated on a target and then we also have a mixture of abilities that require targets

• 54:45

Um, we have two alternate modes of camera settings. We have the action reticle based camera setting

• 54:52

which utilizes a soft lock featuring mechanic, um that

• 54:57

That allows the player to utilize their tab targeted orient abilities

• 55:01

But then also gives them an additional fidelity from an action camera perspective when they're utilizing

• 55:07

a positional based or directional based

• 55:09

Uh template type attacks as well. So, um our desire has always and continues to be

• 55:16

How we can create a mixture of tab target abilities and skill shot oriented positional directional based ability usage

• 55:24

And make something cohesive in that design and I think

• 55:28

That what we're achieving with that regard may not fully, you know feel action oriented may not feel like an action oriented game

• 55:35

But we've always intended to be more

• 55:37

Uh hybrid oriented leaning towards tab target

• 55:41

So you're going to see a mixture of abilities that require the targets and that don't and then you're going to have an option

• 55:45

As the player's perspective to utilize an action action camera mode, which which utilizes a soft target lock feature and our reticle

• 55:55

All right

• 55:56

Um, and then folks are wondering can I and then real quick sorry just to touch on the basic attack comment there

• 56:03

So when you have your weapon and you utilize a basic attack you can blind fire that weapon if it has a projectile

• 56:09

Associated with it without having to have a target in addition if your reticle in action camera mode is over a target

• 56:16

You will have a soft target lock and projectiles will

• 56:20

Home to that target if within the right angle of direction just to answer specifically the question about um, basic attacks

• 56:27

Yeah, and to verify like or to clarify. Um

• 56:30

Um when he's talking about a like ground target aoe is being like

• 56:35

Like skill shots a lot of them are I don't know if you've played

• 56:38

A lot of people have played a variety of games

• 56:39

But a lot of the times you can play something and then it goes in that spot

• 56:42

So you have to there are abilities that are like that where you have to place them and creatures move then you know

• 56:47

So there is some skill element to it

• 56:50

Absolutely, like, you know having to fire at the right target

• 56:53

But it's trying to predict where the targets are going to be to some extent

• 56:56

Yeah, so not moving that makes it easy, I suppose

• 56:59

So you have to pick the order in which you're putting them in

• 57:01

Um, and then the follow-up question to this is um, can I be a fire mage only or a frost mage only or a lightning mage?

• 57:08

Only or will I always have to have some combination of these elements?

• 57:13

So within the elements themselves there are combos that can be

• 57:18

Leveraged for example you were seeing there in the ice bolt and the example of the elemental empowerment on the wand ability

• 57:24

When the elemental empowerment assumes for your wand attacks the last used element for a number of seconds after that

• 57:31

Spell was used. So in this example, I use a um, uh frost bolt

• 57:36

Which is an ice element and that applies stacks of chill to the target, right?

• 57:41

And now chill has the ability when additional stacks of chill from another source are applied to

• 57:48

Promote into a frozen state

• 57:50

And when a target's frozen they're susceptible to the shattered effect and shattered effect can be

• 57:56

Utilized against a frozen target by an electrical attack. So you saw you saw there

• 58:05

Excuse me, you saw there that I ice bolted to apply stacks of chill

• 58:09

I then followed up with my elemental empowered wand attacks that

• 58:13

Added additional chill stacks which created the frozen condition on the target

• 58:17

They couldn't move and then before that frozen condition subsided

• 58:21

I used my arc lightning in order to cause the shattered effect

• 58:25

so

• 58:26

you know there are

• 58:28

Abilities and ways by which in within a particular element you you can create those promotions

• 58:35

But you know obviously when building your class kit you want to take into consideration what type of intricate?

• 58:41

Connections am I creating with my combos? And then in addition, how does that interact with groups that i'm going to interface with?

• 58:48

And other classes and archetypes that play off of the keyword interactions from my abilities as well

• 58:54

Because remember ashes of creation is a group centric group focused game

• 58:58

Which means that when you take into account all of these different types of tier status conditions

• 59:03

You need to take them with the uh with the grain of salt that it has to interact with the party

• 59:08

You're accustomed to playing with and so there's some synergy that needs to be kind of planned out there

• 59:14

The twitch server is having problems

• 59:18

Um, I just did a speed test and on my end i'm getting 20 up

• 59:21

But I think on the twitch server side, there's some weird stuff going on. Oh, no

• 59:26

Um, so there might have been a little bit of weirdness going on with the live stream

• 59:30

So we apologize for that everybody, but the video will have

• 59:34

The the deeds that steven mentioned if you want to re-watch that

• 59:38

Um, and then the next question here is how will line of sight work with abilities in pvp?

• 59:44

It's clean. It's cleared up now. Steven. Okay, got it. Sorry. I was just checking

• 59:49

How we'll say sorry. What was that last question? How will line of sight work with pvp abilities? Yeah

• 59:54

So, um one of one of the things we're looking into and you saw a little bit of this with the visual effects

• 1:00:00

Tech that was used around chain of chain lightning

• 1:00:04

Um is the ability to have projectiles path around corners?

• 1:00:08

Um, and the reason for that and the reason why I think that's interesting and we're going to explore that is that some abilities might have

• 1:00:17

indirect fire so if you have uh, let's say a archer or ranger who has

• 1:00:23

the ability to

• 1:00:25

Select a major fire

• 1:00:27

Um the ability to select a mage as their secondary class and they might want to augment a snipe ability

• 1:00:33

Uh in order to you know go around a corner like an arcane archer might have right?

• 1:00:39

those those interesting types of interactions I think play with the

• 1:00:45

uh the problem

• 1:00:46

Statement that sometimes we've had in gaming and combat where you can play around a corner and try to block line of sight

• 1:00:52

And play with that line of sight. Well some abilities might not care

• 1:00:56

About that line of sight they might care the distance to the target around the corner or the path that it's taking and if it's outside

• 1:01:04

That path is too long. It might not be able to reach them, of course

• 1:01:07

But if you're playing kitty corner with the uh with a player that who's on the opposite end of you

• 1:01:12

Um, you might need to look out for some abilities that are able to path to you

• 1:01:16

Uh that I think is something that's interesting and and I haven't seen used very much in the in in

• 1:01:23

in general combat mechanics for mmos

• 1:01:25

Um, and just to go back to the previous question to more more clarify

• 1:01:29

Um in regards to like if I want to only be a fire mage could I only be a fire mage?

• 1:01:33

We get that there's combos and things like that. Yes. Yeah, if you wanted to only so let me ask that

• 1:01:38

If you wanted to only focus on one particular element

• 1:01:42

This might reduce your horizontal application in the design of combat. However

• 1:01:48

Within one element there are plenty of options and synergies and combos

• 1:01:52

That will still make you relevant

• 1:01:57

All right, cool just clarifying um, and then at higher levels

• 1:02:01

How much will mana management matter to mage players? We didn't see a lot of that happening here. Yeah

• 1:02:06

Yeah, I know that we're not at the balance level of right in regards to mana, but yeah for folks who are curious

• 1:02:13

Um, what is the mana management going to look like for mage players? Well mana management I think um,

• 1:02:19

mana management I think um, not just for mage players

• 1:02:23

But for really every class is a relevant resource mechanic that they have to take into consideration when they're utilizing their rotations

• 1:02:33

And there are going to be abilities that will you know sap your mana faster than others and they're going

• 1:02:40

They're going to be situational

• 1:02:43

Now, um with that blanket statement of mana is always relevant

• 1:02:47

Uh, there is also going to be mechanics and or class synergies and abilities that you can spec into to help mitigate that

• 1:02:55

there's itemization that you can

• 1:02:58

Utilize from a set bonus perspective or certain types of weapons and tattoos that you can acquire

• 1:03:05

Um, there are certain enchantments that you can acquire that might reduce the cost of mana use that might increase your mana regeneration

• 1:03:12

That might increase your mana total pool

• 1:03:14

Um, you know, there are even specs that you can build towards if mana

• 1:03:19

Mana management is your mana management. Nice is your um is your issue, right?

• 1:03:25

um, so we want to make it a compelling case that you need to think about mana use because

• 1:03:31

Um, you know, you don't just want to go 100 all the time with no, you know downside to that

• 1:03:37

Uh, that's a very boring type of interaction

• 1:03:39

All right, and then we know we have a lot of new folks and we've answered this question before but in large-scale pvp

• 1:03:46

Situations with a lot of players. How are we going to handle particle effects and spell effects?

• 1:03:51

So that they're not overwhelming for people. Yeah, I think um, you know a lot of commentary I saw in the twitch chat around

• 1:03:59

These particular effects that you're seeing today

• 1:04:02

Is a good example of how in the past especially during alpha one

• 1:04:06

We talked about first passes and how art is always improving and our art is always moving forward

• 1:04:12

Here is an example where you where now you see some of these abilities are bit dialed back and they're now within kind of

• 1:04:19

The scope of what we would consider not to in your face and more amenable to

• 1:04:25

massive types of pvp situations or large amounts of players, but in addition we'll have uh,

• 1:04:32

Certain features from a scalability setting standpoint that will allow players to even further tone down

• 1:04:38

Both the bloom and brightness of these types of effects has also

• 1:04:42

In addition some of the elements and channels of those effects as well

• 1:04:46

But I think you guys will agree with me here that you know effects now are are

• 1:04:51

As opposed to where they were in alpha one

• 1:04:53

We've taken into account what people's feedback were although it was always the case

• 1:04:56

We were going to address them and we've implemented them in such a way where they're not going to be

• 1:05:00

We've implemented them in such a way where they're more conducive to large player battles

• 1:05:05

Yeah, you know we'll be testing sieges and stuff. So we'll we'll be keeping an eye on all of that

• 1:05:09

So don't worry and we'll take a lot of feedback into play

• 1:05:13

um, and I think one of the questions that keenan even asked was like

• 1:05:16

How are you feeling about the look and the visual quality of the class as well? So

• 1:05:21

We do we will have a thread up in regards to the mage archetype. It probably is already actually up right now

• 1:05:26

Um, so definitely head on over to the forums and provide us your feedback

• 1:05:31

Before we move off that subject real quick

• 1:05:33

I would like to say that visual effects, uh artists are very hard to come by they're one of the very

• 1:05:39

One of the more difficult. Um

• 1:05:42

Talents to acquire within the game industry

• 1:05:44

And I will say for those of you who are following our project

• 1:05:47

And who are excited about ashes of creation to come to fruition and you really want those visuals to look strong and good

• 1:05:53

Don't be afraid to become a de facto recruiter for ashes of creation by going out there and finding your favorite types of visual

• 1:06:01

Effects you've seen in games and messaging those people on a twitter on a linkedin and saying hey ashes of creation is hiring intrepid studios

• 1:06:09

Is hiring for visual effects artists and we want the top tier visual effects artists in this industry

• 1:06:14

Because we're building a top tier mmorpg and we need that talent

• 1:06:18

So our visual effects team is growing along with a lot of teams at intrepid studios

• 1:06:22

And you guys can be part of helping us acquire that talent by helping evangelize for ashes of creation out in those communities

• 1:06:30

Yeah, and our wonderful social media manager peter is constantly posting those things

• 1:06:35

So I think we we have something up right now. If you want to go check out our social channels

• 1:06:39

Scroll a little bit you'll find our promotion for our job applications. So definitely definitely send people our way

• 1:06:46

We're trying our best to to get the voices out there, but it always does help whenever there's a little amplification

• 1:06:52

Or if you know people personally, that's always helpful as well. Oh, yeah, we're keeping an eye out

• 1:06:57

I know that there's been a lot of layoffs which we extend our hearts

• 1:07:01

Oh, yes, who have had to deal with that

• 1:07:03

Um as someone who has been part of that and survived many layoffs

• 1:07:08

I think like it is definitely not an easy thing to go through on either side whether you survive it or you are let go

• 1:07:14

But we are definitely keeping our eye out for good talent and we appreciate we see all the messages you guys send us when you're like

• 1:07:19

Hey, check out this person. They just got laid off. So, um, we are reaching out to folks who

• 1:07:24

We feel would be good fits for intrepid studios

• 1:07:28

Yeah

• 1:07:29

And with that we'll head on up to our art update unless you have anything else you would like

• 1:07:35

To touch base on steven in regards to the mage

• 1:07:38

No, I don't think so

• 1:07:40

No, I don't think so. Of course as always the reason we do these demonstrations and the reasons why we show you

• 1:07:47

Our works in progress is to collect feedback and get your guys's thoughts on what you saw today

• 1:07:51

Keenan gave some great examples of questions and focus areas that we want you to opine on but um, you know

• 1:07:58

Feel free make sure you're jumping on our forums the discord

• 1:08:01

Social media channels on twitter and youtube and facebook and giving us your thoughts on what you saw today

• 1:08:07

What did you like? What did you think could be better? What are examples from other games?

• 1:08:12

and other um

• 1:08:14

um

• 1:08:17

Mmo's that you've played that you enjoyed and and that we could potentially incorporate. Yeah, we want to hear it. I want to hear your feedback

• 1:08:25

All right moving on to character goodies our character artists. Well our artists in general are just um, awesome

• 1:08:32

Uh, we've got some skeleton weapons

• 1:08:34

You know kind of look a little tarnished but um, you've probably seen some of our undead creatures and whatnot

• 1:08:41

And some of our skellies already, but they're working on some more weapons for them so that you can murder them

• 1:08:48

Or they can murder you whichever way it ends up going as we saw it can go both ways

• 1:08:54

Um, and also we've got the featherstone. Um expedition pack

• 1:08:58

That is now has a 3d model and we have a little

• 1:09:06

Turntable of that as well

• 1:09:09

Looks great. Love this. Remember guys, um, you know on the uh

• 1:09:14

On the back slot. There's a few different options that you'll have on for the player in order to showcase a weapon

• 1:09:20

um accessory cape

• 1:09:23

Um this this one's a pretty cool accessory. Yeah, this is cosmetic

• 1:09:27

Uh a cosmetic one so it'll go over that whole slot

• 1:09:31

But there are other ones where you can swap out like the little pieces and details, which will be really cool

• 1:09:37

And then we've got the ward of the implacable

• 1:09:41

Now it has a 3d model as well

• 1:09:44

Looking awesome

• 1:09:46

I know

• 1:09:46

Yes, didn't necessarily like the feathers on this one, but I think it looks cool. What?

• 1:09:50

I I love the colors. I love the materials. I think that they did a great job with this set and uh,

• 1:09:59

And the faction and game that this represents from the npc perspective I think is super cool. Um,

• 1:10:05

Yeah, this is a this is a great set

• 1:10:08

It will definitely help us with in-game stuff and then we've got the godsinger garb

• 1:10:13

And we'll wrap things up and move on with our cows

• 1:10:19

Sorry

• 1:10:20

The cows

• 1:10:21

I know

• 1:10:22

Jinxy did such a good job with the cows and I told her I was like we need highland cows, you know those like long

• 1:10:27

Fluffy cows and she was like, oh

• 1:10:29

Yes, um, but she was she was directed to make some more regular cows

• 1:10:32

Yeah, is this one of the first kind of farm animal stuffs that we've seen? No, we've had a little duck

• 1:10:38

But yeah, that's kind of the first of the like livestock livestock that is available for people to kind of

• 1:10:45

Animal husbandry with on their freeholds and whatnot. Yeah, what's funny is it's just a cow and normally like we are so weird with our stuff

• 1:10:52

So i'm sure you're gonna see some weird deformities of cows in the future. Don't worry guys

• 1:10:57

We have some like more bull-esque looking creatures as well in the past

• 1:11:01

Um, and then I think I have a turntable

• 1:11:03

Of that. Yeah, here we go or we need the longhorn ones with the big long horns

• 1:11:10

I was tempted for those of you who are old fans of um, like ever quest

• 1:11:15

I was tempted to get catkins to do a little scene with us and if catkins is watching this right now

• 1:11:20

He'll know what i'm talking about

• 1:11:22

um

• 1:11:23

But he we had like a whole cow thing and you know one of our old company

• 1:11:28

Yeah, i'll have to send it to you steven and you'll be like, I think I saw it. Okay, you think you saw it?

• 1:11:35

It's pretty funny. I was like, oh we should have done a little thing, but maybe we'll go with future cows

• 1:11:40

And then last minute, uh, jinxy was like I finished the sheep too. I want to show them and so

• 1:11:45

Oh, I love the sheep. They're so cool. I love their horns

• 1:11:52

Look at that

• 1:11:54

I love their horns. Look at the sheep

• 1:12:01

They're wool. I can't wait to shear them for some wool

• 1:12:06

Yeah, they'll probably make some cool clothes we need some interesting

• 1:12:10

sheep

• 1:12:12

wooled clothes

• 1:12:14

I was thinking, you know part of like the freehold slash animal husbandry design when you've domesticated animals and you're like processing them for their

• 1:12:22

um for their materials and whatnot it would be a really cool idea from a narrative perspective if

• 1:12:28

Occasionally your property and the things that you've done on that property

• 1:12:34

Have an opportunity to spur a random quest where one of the sheep breaks out of the pen and you need to go

• 1:12:40

Get the the sheep back and where is that sheep? And what did the sheep get into?

• 1:12:45

I mean those are great predicates, you know as someone who has grown up around like farm animals

• 1:12:50

They do escape sometimes I know one of your friend's posts will like

• 1:12:55

rot and like fall over and then they're like

• 1:12:58

What's over here and then they start walking across the street and then you're like having to chase them and get them back in

• 1:13:04

it is uh

• 1:13:05

It is wild times

• 1:13:07

Um, but yeah, so that is our character art

• 1:13:10

We're gonna go on to our q a and I oh actually studio update first

• 1:13:15

So steven if you want to talk a little bit about um, what's going on on the studio front?

• 1:13:21

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, we are finishing up

• 1:13:25

Our sprint next week and we'll be in our hardening week prior to our next sprint

• 1:13:29

We have had some really successful hires over the course of uh, april

• 1:13:34

We brought on a principal animator a lead technical animator

• 1:13:38

A couple of visual effects artists, uh some audio programmers and designers

• 1:13:44

Um, there's been a big month for hires. Um, as you guys know and as we've been posting we're we're stepping up hiring this

• 1:13:53

year again, um, so

• 1:13:55

A lot of success there stacy cameron

• 1:13:59

John and madori have been doing a great job on the hr side with facilitating those things

• 1:14:04

um

• 1:14:06

we had our uh,

• 1:14:08

Bring your kids to to work day. Uh was it yesterday a day before I think it was yesterday

• 1:14:14

There's a lot going on yesterday

• 1:14:17

But uh that was also happening

• 1:14:19

There's just a bunch of kids here at the studio and I saw that there was some really cool like color books of our

• 1:14:26

Characters that they were coloring in that was really cool to see those characters made some of those pieces for them

• 1:14:32

And so yeah, that was awesome. Um, but yeah, things are going really good at the studio

• 1:14:37

You know lots of lots of fun stuff

• 1:14:40

Yeah

• 1:14:41

And you know, we have a lot of more things coming up in the future

• 1:14:44

We're excited about and so we can't wait for you guys to see that and like steven said we are hiring

• 1:14:48

So please please send folks our way. We're trying to fill a lot of roles here so that we can continue

• 1:14:54

Making lots of good progress is the goal

• 1:14:58

Um so that you can have alpha 2 faster. We know what you guys want. We're working towards it. Yes

• 1:15:03

Um, so moving on to q a I'll just play the video again in the background. So you have something visually compelling whilst we talk

• 1:15:10

We're not that visually compelling

• 1:15:13

I mean we're still on the screen. I I definitely i'll speak for myself. I'm not that visually compelling

• 1:15:18

I mean, I think people would prefer to see the mage over looking at us

• 1:15:22

um

• 1:15:23

The first question here is from bliz

• 1:15:25

Over on our forums and the question is about dungeons to ourselves

• 1:15:29

How many dungeons will a party of adventurers have to access when they meet up each evening?

• 1:15:36

In other words, we will intentionally or will it be?

• 1:15:39

Intentionally rare to find level appropriate dungeons content that is not already engaged by others. I think the concern here is more that

• 1:15:47

Uh because there's a lot of contested content

• 1:15:50

Will there be enough content for everybody or will there be cases where yeah, there's so much contestion that like they can't find

• 1:15:57

I think

• 1:15:58

so

• 1:15:59

To answer the question to begin with

• 1:16:02

We are purposefully

• 1:16:04

launching

• 1:16:06

with

• 1:16:07

Probably one of the most

• 1:16:11

Aggressive and ambitious

• 1:16:15

Content schedule, uh for an mmo at launch, um, I think

• 1:16:20

and uh, but to the second part

• 1:16:23

So the answer to that is yes

• 1:16:24

There's going to be a lot of different opportunities of content areas that you can participate in a lot of that's predicated on how the world

• 1:16:30

gets developed, uh that unlocks those zones, um, but

• 1:16:34

um

• 1:16:36

The second part of that question margaret to I think your point reading into the the purpose of that is when talking about like contestion

• 1:16:43

um

• 1:16:45

Is that not all content is equal okay, and and that's a very important

• 1:16:51

contextual point to this answer

• 1:16:53

Um, we are we purposefully create tiers of content areas

• 1:17:00

And we also create types of content areas and the tiers might relate to things like

• 1:17:07

better drop rates better respond rates better

• 1:17:14

Damage mitigation for your particular group composition

• 1:17:20

Better

• 1:17:22

Uh proximity to certain locations

• 1:17:25

Those create tiers of areas where content becomes more relevant or more desired, right?

• 1:17:31

on the second flip side of that is

• 1:17:34

there are um the

• 1:17:37

What you gain from those content areas that might be relevant for certain classes or certain groups more so than others

• 1:17:44

Um, so yes, you will have access to a lot of different content

• 1:17:48

Um, will the will the best or most relevant content that's

• 1:17:53

To you or your group always be available. No

• 1:17:57

And that is the element of competition

• 1:18:00

Right and if things don't feel competitive around what's best

• 1:18:07

Then you have removed an element of the satisfaction when you've acquired slash succeeded in

• 1:18:15

participating in that content and that is a fundamental core pillar

• 1:18:21

Behind what ash is attempting to achieve?

• 1:18:25

Through the distribution of content, but also the interaction of players

• 1:18:30

Um, and and I think that's an important concept that we cannot forget about when we think about

• 1:18:37

Um a question like this

• 1:18:40

All right

• 1:18:41

Next up. It was a long answer. Uh, hopefully you can get through a few more. I know let me know what you're cut off

• 1:18:48

Lithium wants to know about crafting skills

• 1:18:50

Are there any passive skills in crafting in the crafting tree that allow you to drop less material on depth?

• 1:18:59

Uh not in the crafting tree, but there are in the um

• 1:19:04

Material inventory bags that you can't acquire

• 1:19:08

um

• 1:19:09

in the crafting trees

• 1:19:11

There are within those professions abilities to augment things like drop rates and

• 1:19:18

gathering speeds and

• 1:19:21

Ability to survey stuff like that

• 1:19:23

um and tool creation whatnot, um, but uh, the

• 1:19:28

Dropping mechanics really more relate to uh your bags

• 1:19:34

And so there will be different benefits to bags. Yes, there's item

• 1:19:37

There's item progression as it relates to quality of bags types of bags and the materials. They're most used for

• 1:19:45

Um, some of them are more pvp oriented that can reduce significantly drop rates for pvp as a result of that progression

• 1:19:52

Um, you know, so there are there's a there's a complexity there

• 1:19:56

All right, and andewin wants to know about character role play effects player death means xp debt and losing materials

• 1:20:03

The rp community wants to know what are the in-game lore repercussions of revival upon death?

• 1:20:09

For example, does my character lose memory? Are they weaker? Does a period of time occur? But uh before revival

• 1:20:16

What happens when we are?

• 1:20:19

Come back. I had this I had we had this question yesterday in our pi meeting. Um, and

• 1:20:26

You know kind of

• 1:20:28

Oh

• 1:20:30

I'm, shoot. I hope you don't I hope you don't ban my account. Um, no, I was gonna say that uh,

• 1:20:36

I'll kind of give the same answer I gave there is you know

• 1:20:40

That question touches a little close to the metaphysical nature of the universe and ashes of creation

• 1:20:46

um

• 1:20:47

Uh, it's a difficult one for me to answer without revealing perhaps too much of that metaphysical nature

• 1:20:53

Uh, what I will say is that there is a spiritual element obviously to ashes of creation and its universe and story and the lore

• 1:21:02

Um, there is a spark there is a mortal coil that the character has which relates to kind of the interaction of

• 1:21:09

resurrection or revival

• 1:21:11

Uh and how it relates to the goddess of creation your existence within that universe as a mortal coil

• 1:21:17

Um, so there is lore there. It's just not what i'm comfortable commenting on prior to the game's launch

• 1:21:23

All right

• 1:21:25

You guys will have to find out

• 1:21:27

Uh and azara wants to know about caravans. Does a caravan stop moving or slow down when it's attacked?

• 1:21:34

Um, there are certain attacks that can slow the caravan but basic attacks will not slow a caravan. No

• 1:21:41

So you can try to trudge through while you're taking yeah, they're they're they're

• 1:21:44

That's correct. Yeah run

• 1:21:47

Well, and to that point right caravan speeds are built around character speeds so that the interaction and interval of

• 1:21:56

Of distance traveled by a caravan versus when players are attacking it is somewhat equitable

• 1:22:02

But there are certain types of items that you can use that can slow and or block caravans from a collision perspective

• 1:22:08

There are certain abilities and or status conditions that can get applied to caravans which reduce

• 1:22:13

There's damage that can be done to components of caravans which reduce speed

• 1:22:17

There's you know, there's lots of different ways to affect that

• 1:22:21

All right, and then kind of going back to the resurrection stuff, but this is from nick and they're wondering about

• 1:22:30

Items will we have items that let us resurrect other players? We know that there are certain

• 1:22:36

Archetypes that will allow that but will there ever be items that allow it as well?

• 1:22:44

Um

• 1:22:45

I'm

• 1:22:45

So sorry, I was I my mind actually went off in a totally different direction

• 1:22:50

I got stuck on that thought while you're asking the question and I missed the last half part of it. What was that?

• 1:22:54

What was it again? Will we have items that let us resurrect other players? Oh, yes. Yeah, there will be there will be

• 1:23:00

scrolls of resurrection available

• 1:23:02

Although there are is an element of resurrection that's important as it relates to experience debt

• 1:23:08

And being able to recover portions of that experience debt when utilizing higher grade resurrections that are only available from classes

• 1:23:15

And then there are lower grade resurrections which are can be granted through items like scrolls of resurrection

• 1:23:22

That that allows for parties who may not have access to a resurrection class

• 1:23:26

Be able to continue on but it will be at a deficit

• 1:23:29

All right, and then horrendous wants to know about tulnar lore

• 1:23:34

since we received an

• 1:23:36

Immortal soul or spark of life by going through the gateway from sanctus. How are the tulnar players able to respawn?

• 1:23:43

Since they didn't go through the same portal

• 1:23:47

Well, um

• 1:23:49

So again not to touch too much on the metaphysical nature here

• 1:23:55

The tulnar are descendants of the divine races

• 1:24:00

and

• 1:24:01

the tulnar sought refuge in an area of vera

• 1:24:06

That has some element of mystery around how that occurred which players will need to discover

• 1:24:13

And then there's the

• 1:24:15

connection the spark exists within the taller as well and how that spark exists within the taller

• 1:24:20

is something that

• 1:24:22

Players will be able to discover as they progress through the storylines and ashes

• 1:24:27

You will learn

• 1:24:30

Uh, this one is about gatherables from rufian and they want to know what are the differences between biome exclusive resources

• 1:24:38

For the

• 1:24:19

Um, and there is a connection the spark exists within the taller as well and how that spark exists within the taller

• 1:24:27

is something that

• 1:24:29

Players will be able to discover as they progress through the storylines and ashes

• 1:24:34

You will learn

• 1:24:36

Uh, this one is about gatherables from rufian and they want to know what are the differences between biome exclusive resources?

• 1:24:44

For example, do different ores give different resistances, etc? Um, yeah

• 1:24:51

There are associated with specific types of raw gatherables and resources that can be processed into refined materials

• 1:25:00

that grant different elements of benefit and or bonuses or um or uh,

• 1:25:07

Abilities uh to the different types of itemizations and or recipes that are available

• 1:25:16

So based on where that element can be found there might even be

• 1:25:20

relationships that are shared across different materials and or resources in those locations that share some of those

• 1:25:27

Characteristics that can be applied to items. So yes, it is it is specific to the material and it's even grade

• 1:25:33

Potentially that are that are used

• 1:25:35

Right and then send garden wants to know about gliding mounts which we kind of showed a little bit today

• 1:25:40

Will gliding mounts be momentum based or feature any speed boosting mechanics to make the experience more skill based and interactive?

• 1:25:49

Yeah, so an important thing to note is that um all mounts have the ability to acquire up to four abilities and skills

• 1:25:58

some of those skills will be uh,

• 1:26:00

You know propulsion based or speed based that can um enhance or increase or burst

• 1:26:07

Um different speeds some might be defensive based that would protect the rider and the mount for a short period of time

• 1:26:13

Some can be offensive

• 1:26:17

And that's part of what interfaces with the animal husbandry system and the ability to train those mounts

• 1:26:23

in order to

• 1:26:24

Unlock the use of those abilities

• 1:26:26

I think this is more of when you're gliding the skill in regards to the player like the skill of the player

• 1:26:34

Gliding the creature. Is it going to be more skill based in that regard and interactive?

• 1:26:38

Versus boom I hit a button i'm now gliding and I land, you know type of thing

• 1:26:43

Um, not not specifically probably what they're thinking about skill wise, but there is skill associated with it

• 1:26:50

Where's my launch point? Um, am I going to?

• 1:26:53

To you know hit this ledge that i'm trying to depth

• 1:26:58

You know gauge the depth for from my distance and calculate the speed on when do I use the abilities that I need to use?

• 1:27:05

um, you know do they uh

• 1:27:08

Am I misusing them at different times? So there is skill there. Um, so i'm not sure exactly

• 1:27:13

You know what type of skill they're referring to if not those okay

• 1:27:17

And then this one is from phantom max, which they wanted about removing player corruption

• 1:27:22

We talked about how experience removes corruption, but does gaining crafting experience specifically remove corruption?

• 1:27:29

Does gaining crafting experience remove corruption? Yes. So any experience that's gained by the player whether it be through

• 1:27:36

achievements in crafting or in adventuring or

• 1:27:43

Uh through other types of achievements

• 1:27:45

Um, all of that experience goes towards your adventuring class experience gained and then some experience can dual purpose

• 1:27:53

towards professions as well, so if I

• 1:27:56

reach an achievement in my crafting profession

• 1:28:00

And that grants me additional experience within that profession to rank up

• 1:28:05

it will also grant the same amount of experience over in my

• 1:28:09

um, uh adventuring level and to that point anytime you gain adventuring experience

• 1:28:16

um, you tick away at the corruption

• 1:28:19

And our last question is from hartison who wants to know about guild meta

• 1:28:25

And I apologize if i'm saying your name wrong. I think that's the first time that one's come up. Um

• 1:28:29

Will the meta for guilds be to just create alliances of smaller guilds with many skills?

• 1:28:36

Rather than larger guilds with less skills. Well, remember alliances are limited the number of guilds that can

• 1:28:44

participate in

• 1:28:45

An alliance is a limited number also achieving the ability even to launch an alliance

• 1:28:51

um is something that is uh is very late in the guild leveling process

• 1:28:57

um and uh

• 1:28:59

Uh, uh, essentially, you know what we're trying to create is an environment where there's a duality between

• 1:29:07

guilds that try to go towards population and then guilds that choose to forego population, um in exchange for

• 1:29:14

a a deeper access to

• 1:29:17

Passive skills that the players have access to will the meta be for many smaller guilds to to co-locate with each other

• 1:29:24

Yes, i'm sure that that will be utilized by

• 1:29:28

Um some number of smaller guilds in order to try to combat the numbers that other guilds might have access to

• 1:29:35

Um, I don't think that that's a bad thing

• 1:29:37

I don't necessarily know if that's a meta either because it's going to be beneficial for larger guilds

• 1:29:42

To be allied with smaller guilds that might have access to those passive abilities that they don't have access to

• 1:29:48

so what I think the meta will actually be is probably a

• 1:29:52

A mixture of large guild and small guilds that exist within the alliances so that they can overcome the types of challenges that occur

• 1:29:59

In objective based gameplay for events where you need the smaller guild with the passives to overcome the challenge rating

• 1:30:05

But you also need the numbers from the larger guilds in order to engage with the opponent at the choke points

• 1:30:10

I think the question is more that people feel that larger guilds will decide to go with more smaller guilds like

• 1:30:17

Let's say I have a guild of a thousand people normally i'll spread that out into a bunch of hundred people guilds

• 1:30:23

In order to get better benefits

• 1:30:24

I think is what they're trying to aim for versus like because there will be different benefits for small guilds versus larger guilds

• 1:30:32

Yeah, I mean, um is that what is going to happen will large

• 1:30:37

Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds?

• 1:30:45

Um, absolutely that will happen

• 1:30:47

And uh the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always

• 1:30:53

Is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate

• 1:30:57

um

• 1:30:58

Uh the use case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings

• 1:31:05

Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always it depends on what they're encountering

• 1:31:10

Um, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure. Okay

• 1:31:15

Cool and that wraps us up for today. Whoo. We made it to the end

• 1:31:20

And it was a long one

• 1:31:22

So thank you all for hanging in with us and we hope that you had fun and enjoyed this as well as getting like a little

• 1:31:28

sneak peek of the mage. We know that you want to see fire abilities. So maybe you'll see those in the future

• 1:31:34

Uh, and also we do want you to experience experience some of it in alpha 2

• 1:31:37

So we're not going to share everything all the time on here, but we do have some really fun updates for next month

• 1:31:42

So we hope that you will join us. We'll let you guys know whenever those things are coming up over on our social channels

• 1:31:49

Definitely recommend following us in all the places at Ashes of Creation. We're pretty active over there

• 1:31:55

Um, and then we also want to remind you that we do have our creative director community Q&A that is over on our

• 1:32:01

On our youtube channel if you didn't get to check that out. Steven took some time to he's kind of sick during it

• 1:32:06

He's kind of sick during it, but he did power through and answered a lot of great questions from our community members Chibi Bree

• 1:32:12

Richie, sh, and Simurg, so definitely check those out. And of course head on over to our forums. We want your feedback

• 1:32:20

There's already thread forums.ashesofcreation.com

• 1:32:23

In regards to the mage archetype

• 1:32:25

So definitely head over there answer those questions that Keenan had because they're going to be making some changes as we move forward

• 1:32:31

Especially before everyone gets to see it in alpha 2 and reminder that our cosmetic swap over is on May 10th at 11 a.m

• 1:32:38

So snag those and of course, we just want to thank you again for joining us

• 1:32:43

Thank you to John and Keenan and trad for being part of this stream as well as Steven. Appreciate your time. We know you busy

• 1:32:51

And we hope that you all

• 1:32:53

Had a really great time here

• 1:32:55

And we hope that you go for another month and are able to return to us with another fun stream

• 1:33:00

The VOD will be up here on Twitch. We'll also have it over on YouTube

• 1:33:04

We'll have the 4k version of the mage content as well. And then this video will go out

• 1:33:10

on Saturday with the full

• 1:33:13

And of course on the dev update make sure you leave us a comment

• 1:33:17

Subscribe to our channel and make sure your subscriptions are live so that we can see them

• 1:33:21

And you could potentially be spotlighted in our next one. And with that we will see you all next month for another update

• 1:33:28

Bye everyone. Thanks for joining. See ya