Talk:2023-09-29 Livestream

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Intro

• 00:00

the

• 00:17

Hello everyone and welcome to our ashes of creation September update.

• 00:23

We hope that you are excited. I'm cozy. I've got my like, I know autumn sweater on. It's

• 00:31

this is the season is the season now we are finally in the autumn. Yes. It's my favorite

• 00:37

season. I love it so much. But of course, we have a wonderful show for you today. We

• 00:43

hope that you are excited. You've been waiting for a month. We've been waiting for a month.

• 00:47

We've got a lot of stuff that we've been doing internally. Maybe we'll talk a little bit

• 00:52

more about that on the studio update as well. But of course, today is a temporary agenda

• 00:59

is we have our reminders. We have an event update. And if you've been following us on

• 01:03

social, we've been letting folks know that is going to be a wave based combat. So get

• 01:07

excited for a little bit of combat action. I know folks are excited for that. I had a

• 01:12

lot of fun playing so yeah, we like like a mofo. And we've got our studio update.

• 01:22

Art update and Q&A as per usual. So jam packed. But hopefully today won't be as long. So you

• 01:31

know, just hopefully you have a good amount of snacks, some water. You don't need to buckle

• 01:36

in this time. We'll be a little shorter than normal. But of course, first we have some

• 01:42

quick updates and reminders. The first one here is that we do have a comment. So today's

Reminders

• 01:48

comment spotlight from our YouTube video from our last development update is the idea behind

• 01:54

all these nodes are awesome, but I wonder how it will actually play out in the live

• 01:59

version. The problem is having player run or the problem with having player run towns

• 02:04

is that people come and go in video games. So will towns die out, etc. And this is from

• 02:09

name is too. So thank you name is for, you know, subscribing to our YouTube channel and

• 02:14

leaving a wonderful comment. Yeah, this is a good question. And fundamentally, you get

• 02:19

it a lot too. Absolutely we do. And it is it is something that's at the forefront of

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how we, you know, design systems that are intended to provide player interaction and

• 02:30

player agency and player direction, right? One of the I wouldn't say downsides, but risks

• 02:37

of those types of mechanics and systems is that you do have the potential for either

• 02:42

bad faith actors. Excuse me, or just people who come and go as you said. And so, you know,

• 02:54

we incorporate as part of those designs, certain fail safes, certain protections, certain automated

• 03:01

progression that takes over when some of those decisions are lacking or are not made. And

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those decisions can be defaulted. Now, of course, that would have a deleterious effect

• 03:13

on kind of the direction that a particular node might want to go because they're going

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to be doing default behaviors or default actions as opposed to something that might be in line

• 03:21

with the strategic objective of that particular node or the specialization that the node has

• 03:26

previously been attempting to do. But that is why we have a regularly recurring election

• 03:32

period where players can take the reins of power and can elect someone else to come in

• 03:38

and participate and rewrite the ship, so to speak. So it is absolutely a component of

• 03:46

having player driven mechanics that there is an opportunity for things to be less than

• 03:50

ideal or less than strategic when certain bad faith actors or people leave. But there

• 03:58

are safeguards in place. Perfect. Hopefully that suffices for you. Name is too. I'm sure

• 04:08

you'll let us know what your thoughts are on it. And of course, if you do have thoughts

• 04:12

on any of these things, you can head on over to forums. We are very diligent about taking

• 04:16

player feedback. The next thing, speaking of player feedback, segue, we have some dev

• 04:24

discussions. The one that is currently out, we have our dream nodes. So if you have some

• 04:29

thoughts on what you would like your dream node to be, head on over and toss us your

• 04:34

feedback. And up and coming, we also will have a dev discussion about basic attacks

• 04:39

as well. So definitely, we would love to hear your thoughts. And this is a combination of

• 04:45

basic attacks and auto attacks as well, because I think in different games, people consider

• 04:50

these different things. So we have a lot of questions from the development team in regards

• 04:54

to how you would like to utilize those, whether you want to kind of stream them in between

• 04:59

your abilities or if you're not interested in that at all. So there will be a lot of

• 05:04

questions for you to answer there. And I do just want to emphasize that these dev discussions

• 05:10

are of critical importance to the development team. Obviously, the reason why, and I have

• 05:16

echoed this over the course of many years and then these development updates, but the

• 05:23

reason why it's so beneficial for us to partake in a transparent development process is because

• 05:28

it affords us the opportunity to collect that real time feedback and experiences and direction

• 05:34

to a degree from the consumers that we are creating this product for, from you guys,

• 05:40

the gamers, our community, right? So if you have the time to go and kind of give your

• 05:45

commentary on the things that you expect to see out of these types of systems, the experiences

• 05:50

that you've had in different games, what you've enjoyed about them, what you'd like to see

• 05:53

done differently, it is great because our community team and Margaret helps to shepherd

• 05:59

kind of all of these comments into an easily digestible format that the developers then

• 06:05

have an opportunity to see what you guys are saying. And that's something that I think

• 06:09

is super important to make sure that those touch points of communications between the

• 06:12

community and the development team is of critical importance to the development.

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And I will say this as somebody who's worked in this industry for a very long time, I love

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that Steven affords us that not every team gets, you know, two Q or two community managers

• 06:28

to be able to help with that. But Roshan and Bacchanar have been doing an amazing job and

• 06:32

getting resounding love from our development team in regards to their reports. So they

• 06:37

do a very diligent job in reading everything you guys post in all the spaces. So we really

• 06:43

appreciate it. And of course, to put a caveat on that as well, because I know there's the

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counteract of that is that, of course, we're not going to do everything that players say.

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You know, we do have a vision and direction of our product. And so we're going to try

• 06:57

to make the best decisions for us and what we want to create. But it is always nice to

• 07:01

make sure that we're all on the same page, because for the most part, that is that has

• 07:05

been the case. So just keeping that in mind.

• 07:09

Yeah, just to touch on that point real quick, the the elegance of filtering out the expression

• 07:15

from our player base who don't have, of course, in many cases, the experience of developing

• 07:20

a product like this, but have the experience of playing them and know what they like and

• 07:25

dislike. That is where the community team comes in and helps to filter out, you know,

• 07:31

kind of that feedback so that not only is it digestible, but that it's cohesive and

• 07:35

can make sense from a development perspective.

• 07:37

Yeah, it's, it's very well done. So thank you. Keep giving us your feedback. You know,

• 07:44

I think a lot of the times when you're a player of a game, you're like, why did they make

• 07:47

this decision? Well, we're sharing the journey with you. We're telling you why we're making

• 07:50

those decisions. And we're showing you each little bit as we move forward. So be a part

• 07:55

of it if it's something that you really want. And if you don't step away, it's okay. You

• 07:58

don't have to either, you know, make a decision that's best for you. Next up, of course, is

• 08:03

what are you giggling about? I'm sorry. I just saw someone in chat that's put in a picture

• 08:11

of me that ages over time into into gray.

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You haven't seen that before?

• 08:16

No, I haven't seen that before.

• 08:17

Yeah, they've been using it on Discord too.

• 08:18

That's concerning and scary.

• 08:19

There's a lot of Steven memes out there. So some of them are pretty intricate videos

• 08:29

to Steven. He's like, I don't want to know. Next up, this is just a reminder, of course,

• 08:36

that the Unseen Order cosmetics, they are going to be our last preorder pack set. We

• 08:42

have an FAQ on our article or in our article. You can check that out at ashesofcreation.com

• 08:48

slash news and you'll see the Unseen Order section. This is the last preorder pack set

• 08:54

and it is going to end on January 17th, 2024 at 11am Pacific. This does not mean that we're

• 09:01

not going to ever do cosmetics ever again. Or that you're not going to ever have access

• 09:06

to Alpha 2 or Beta 1 or Beta 2 again, but there will just be different forms of how

• 09:11

you get access to that pending whether we think we can support more players for those.

• 09:16

Absolutely. And I do encourage as Margaret has in the past, take a look at the FAQ section

• 09:22

of that. You know, I went through the FAQ and provided as intricate as detailed answers

• 09:26

as I could regarding the potential for future pack sales. Obviously, that's predicated on

• 09:32

our internal and external testing periods that we will be incorporating over the course

• 09:36

of the coming time. It's important to note, the intent of these packages is not to elicit

• 09:43

a fear of missing out response by our community. That is why this last pack will be extended

• 09:50

to January 17th. January 17th. You got a lot of time. There's a lot of time there. In addition,

• 09:58

Alpha 2 will be a non-NDA'd testing period that you will have an opportunity to watch

• 10:06

and partake in from a viewership perspective, even if you're not participating from a playing

• 10:10

perspective. Alpha 2, I can't reiterate this enough, Alpha 2 is not an intended game experience.

• 10:18

It is a testing experience. It is something that players who are participating in Alpha

• 10:24

2 are assisting in the development of it. There may be wipes, there will be periods

• 10:29

of time where we're taking it down and we're iterating upon it. It is not intended to be

• 10:34

a fun experience per se, although I believe it will be a fun experience.

• 10:37

I think it will be fun.

• 10:38

I think it will be fun. But it is intended to test our core systems. It is intended to

• 10:44

test our network architectures. It is intended to prepare the game for an official launch,

• 10:50

so our prepares for betas.

• 10:52

And our core systems.

• 10:53

And our core systems. And to that end, do not feel like if you are not participating

• 10:58

in Alpha 2 that you're missing out on something. This is not integral to the play experience

• 11:05

you will have when the game launches. And so that's something that's very important.

• 11:08

I mean, look at the journey that we've had so far, right? See where the game was before

• 11:12

and where it's at now. Or if you saw the Alpha 1 footage, which is, you know, you can Google

• 11:18

that because that was also non-UNDA'd. You can see how far we've come from that, too.

• 11:24

Absolutely.

• 11:25

There's definitely going to be a journey here. And you can be part of that whether you're

• 11:30

in game or being able to watch and tell someone else what you want them to do.

• 11:36

Sure.

• 11:37

Maybe we can get the programmers to do a chat character where like you chat, try to make

• 11:43

the character do things would be fun. Maybe not for Alpha 2, but that could be a cool

• 11:48

experience. But yeah, just wanted to remind people that there is an FAQ. Make sure you

• 11:52

check that out, that this will be the last pack set for now. And we are thinking about

• 11:59

how we want to move forward with other potential shop stuff as well. I know exclusivity has

• 12:04

been a problem that people are concerned about. And I think in future shop items, we will

• 12:09

kind of remove some of that element so we can rotate in things. So if you missed it,

• 12:14

there will be an opportunity for you to get it again later rather than right now where

• 12:17

everything's very much exclusive. But that's kind of how we've had stuff set up. And with

Event Update

• 12:24

that, I think we are on to our events update if you're ready.

• 12:29

Yes, I'm ready for it. Absolutely. So I didn't do a lot of prefacing this time in the video

• 12:38

to my dismay after the recording was completed because now of course that's a standalone

• 12:43

on YouTube and some people may not hear that this is a work in progress. But hopefully

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I've said it enough prior to that, that it just carries forward.

• 12:50

I know.

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But regardless, I know. But regardless, I do want to preface now that what you guys

• 12:56

are about to see is a bit different than what you saw with our story arc system. And it

• 13:04

is different from our commissions system. This is our event system. And to be clear,

• 13:11

what you're going to see is an example of the event system that showcases types of content

• 13:17

that can be popped up in the world around you based on predicates of what's happening

• 13:23

in the world. And this particular event that you're going to see a pop up of is with regards

• 13:29

to a destructed caravan that's having some wave assault by some bandits. And the reason

• 13:38

for that event kicking off is because in the background there might be negotiations, there

• 13:43

might be advancement in relationship status between nodes that cause the thematic element

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of this pop up event being a automated caravan moving throughout the world or whatever that

• 13:56

hit the snag of the bandit encounter and players in the area around it have an opportunity

• 14:01

to participate. Now there's a lot of different predicate systems that are involved in the

• 14:05

event system and they correlate in some way, shape or form to some other types of world

• 14:11

states that are happening within Vera at the time and that give players an opportunity

• 14:16

to interact with those events and receive rewards and receive experience and receive

• 14:21

gold and receive some loot tables off of that. And these pop up kind of around the world,

• 14:26

right? So you're going to be seeing an example of that here in the upcoming Alpha 2. And

• 14:33

this is a video that Clayton and Scott and Aimee and a lot of others have obviously helped

• 14:38

to stand up the event system so that it is a very versatile way to deliver content to

• 14:44

the players. So as a disclaimer, of course, this is all a work in progress. This is still

• 14:49

an alpha state. The UI is pending additional development as is the visual effects and some

• 14:55

of the performance indicators. But this gives you an idea of what you can expect coming

• 15:00

in Alpha 2. So we do have an article of other events too. So if you want some more event

• 15:07

action, you can check that out. Oh, and real quick. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. I know

• 15:12

some people are constantly asking us about Alpha 2. We are going to have a little bit

• 15:18

of an announcement here at the end of the stream. Not too much hype, just giving a little

• 15:22

bit of direction with regards to expectations for Alpha 2. But we will talk about that after

• 15:27

the event showcase.

• 15:28

All right. See you on the flip side.

• 15:53

Hello everyone and welcome to another live stream from the glorious world of Vera. And

• 15:59

we have an exciting showcase to give you all today. We're going to be talking about our

• 16:05

event system. And I am actually joined by three of our absolutely wonderful developers

• 16:12

with whom you've spoken with in the past on some other live streams. We have one of our

• 16:17

glorious engineers, Clayton. Clayton, how you doing buddy?

• 16:20

Absolutely wonderful, glorious. What an introduction. I'm doing great. I know. Really, really, really

• 16:25

so many words to show off all of our hard work. So very excited to see it with you and

• 16:31

excited to chat with the community about it. I know you guys have been doing a lot of hard

• 16:35

work on this. We also have two of our wonderful designers. Scott, how you doing buddy?

• 16:41

Excellent. I'm very excited to be here.

• 16:43

Yay. And I'm me. I mean, how are you doing?

• 16:46

I'm good. Last time I was here, we took down two mocks, so I'm ready today. I'm playing

• 16:51

cleric again. So yeah, I got your back.

• 16:56

Thank you. Okay. So you heard it here first, folks. If I die, it's of course not my fault.

• 17:04

It would be the cleric's fault. No, but okay. So where are we? We are in a familiar biome.

• 17:11

Many of you guys should be expecting where we are. We are in the wonderful riverlands.

• 17:16

We are a little bit east of the last live stream location, which was the windstead node.

• 17:22

Yeah, I see carfen in the distance.

• 17:24

Yep. Carfen is even further east from windstead. So we're kind of sandwiched between windstead

• 17:28

and carfen right now. No big curse happening right now. So it's a nice day out.

• 17:33

Okay. So it's a nice day out. There's not like any type of blood curse or undead roaming

• 17:37

the area.

• 17:38

No, not at the moment. No.

• 17:39

Okay, very cool. And what are we doing here in the riverlands? Talk to me a little bit

• 17:45

about what has brought us out here. And I'm going to jump off my glorious steed here while

• 17:50

we talk about that.

• 17:51

Absolutely. So we're actually just out here to kill some mobs, grind some experience,

• 17:57

get some resources maybe out of the land here. And eventually the world should react to that

• 18:03

and we could potentially create an event here.

• 18:07

I see a web weaver. So okay, so our objective right now is we're going to be showing off,

• 18:14

obviously, the event system. And part of that event system is that it can take a whole host

• 18:20

of different predicates to kind of kick off different types of events. Clayton, talk to

• 18:24

me a little bit about what that means.

• 18:26

He's on me. He's on me. Yeah. As soon as I'm not dying. But yeah, so the event system,

• 18:34

it can query a lot of different aspects of the dynamic world state. Right now it's actually

• 18:40

just tracking player activity in the world and for this event in particular. And it's

• 18:48

looking for us to kill some stuff. So we're out here killing some stuff and eventually

• 18:51

the event should trigger once it's detected enough player activity.

• 18:57

Very cool. And this type of predicate that is essentially the activity map for killing,

• 19:04

yeah, the activity map. That's not the only way that these events can get kicked off.

• 19:08

There's a whole host of different ways that they can also get kicked off.

• 19:11

For sure. Yeah. So we have a really, really awesome system that the designers have access

• 19:15

to that lets them hook into really any dynamic world state and use that to inform the instantiation

• 19:24

or even just like the progression of any event.

• 19:28

Very cool. These spiders are gross.

• 19:34

Scott, what are some plans that you have for different predicates for instantiating some

• 19:41

of these events? Yeah. So obviously we just got this kind of

• 19:45

generic sort of kill one here that we can use for all sorts of different things for

• 19:49

tracking player activity. Nope, big bear time. We also are looking at the amount of resources

• 19:55

that players can harvest as a predicate. We have story arcs that are going on. So active

• 20:01

stories to cause different events to start. Yeah. Great caravans happening, relationships

• 20:06

between different nodes and also just the state of the nodes themselves.

• 20:10

Oh, you and let him beat me up here because it's kind of cool.

• 20:15

He's charging you. Oh, he will throw you around. Those bears can really catch you off guard

• 20:23

if you let them. Okay. So I see that a nearby event has started.

• 20:30

The predicate has been met. Oh, and I see now on the mini map we have

• 20:34

a little bit of a location for it. Yeah. So just south of us here, we were just

• 20:40

kind of the event has kind of kicked off because of the just us killing stuff around in the

• 20:45

area here. And we might see some visual indicators over

• 20:50

the hill here in a second. And so when one of these events kick off,

• 20:55

it's not just obviously notifying players based off of their proximity with the mini

• 20:59

map and with the UI toast that pops up. But also, as you said, Clayton, we have a visual

• 21:04

indicator in world that's also rooting the the event as well.

• 21:08

Yeah, for sure. You know, Scott can probably touch on, you know, the diegetic nature of

• 21:13

all of our narrative content and the the goals there. But oh, wait, hold on. Before we get

• 21:21

too close. I'm seeing that there's some gray shore archers and a gray shore swordsman.

• 21:27

Oh, OK. All right. Oh, should I join this event as a defender team?

• 21:32

I should definitely. Yes, that'll allow if some other players do come around while we're

• 21:38

playing, that'll allow them to join the event raid group with us. So we've effectively taken

• 21:45

the party that we had preformed and merged that into a new raid group.

• 21:52

OK, I slept a couple of these of the highway captains. There's some of them on the settlers

• 21:59

right now. OK, and the settlers are an objective type that exists within this particular archers.

• 22:07

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my God. There's a lot of no, they're sniping from up on top

• 22:12

of the rocks. Thanks, Amy. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I'm going to go for the long guns down.

• 22:19

Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. The event difficulty did change, though. That's why the event difficulty

• 22:27

is a good thing. It means we got back up. There are people here to help us. And oh,

• 22:31

yeah, I see them on the hill. They're coming down. They joined the raid.

• 22:35

We were we're distracting the bandits from the settlers right now. So that's good. None

• 22:41

of them have died. Caravan integrity is good. OK, I see the caravan integrity on the on

• 22:51

the event. No, no, no. It looks like they're mostly just going for the settlers right now.

• 22:57

Oh, no. Those poor settlers. We've we've kept them up. Nope. I just saw one die. Oh, God.

• 23:03

Two of them. Two of them went out at once. All right. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

• 23:11

They would have been fine. So our objective here is to protect the settlers while we eliminate

• 23:16

twenty times. OK. OK, but there's probably another wave coming. Yes, there's still some

• 23:26

shore. There's still some great shore people. Well, I see some of them coming from northeast.

• 23:32

There's an arsonist coming. There we go. There we go. Oh, and some from downhill northwest

• 23:37

too. Scott, why are they coming from the north? So we're actually pretty near one of our POI,

• 23:44

which is actually under bandit control. The aptly named Highwayman Hills is just over the

• 23:50

corner, just around the corner here. So they'll be attacking NPCs kind of in this area until

• 23:55

such a time as players deal with it via story. And the settlers are trying to keep these

• 24:04

guys alive, right? OK. All right. We did it. OK. OK. OK. So it says prepare for the final

• 24:13

assault. This is this is staged based off of our kind of our progress, our activity,

• 24:19

our success. What is this? Yeah. So we we defeated the requisite number of bandits there,

• 24:27

which is going to progress the stage here. And during this stage here, we can reset some

• 24:32

of the traps that the bandits used to initially destroy the convoy and we can use those against

• 24:37

the bandits in the next phase, which is actually more difficult. So. Yeah, we'll definitely

• 24:42

need them whenever they the bandits do come with reinforcements, they're probably going

• 24:48

to be bringing their best, so. Especially because we have more players now, so the difficulty

• 24:53

of the event will be more when there are more players. And of course, like all things in

• 24:57

Ashes, the more difficult the challenge, the better the rewards. And also, you know, our

• 25:03

clerics can have some time to heal up the the settlers and, you know, hopefully set

• 25:09

us up for success whenever the next round does come in. And how do we how do we leverage

• 25:15

the reward system? How are people, you know, getting calculated what rewards they should

• 25:19

get for events like this? We have kind of a number of metrics that we can use. I think

• 25:26

we're going to be doing a lot of testing to figure out what the best metrics are, because

• 25:29

there are some ups and downs using like the amount of damage you've done, you know, in

• 25:33

the in the raid and stuff like that. And we're also like more relaxed things like how much

• 25:38

time you spent participating in the event, whether that's doing damage or healing allies

• 25:42

and things like that as a as a percentage of the total time of the event. They all have

• 25:47

their drawbacks and benefits. Some are, you know, we got to be careful about. Yeah. But

• 25:52

yeah, we'll just count up the contribution, however we end up balancing that. And then

• 25:57

we have different tiers of rewards that are given to each individual player based off

• 26:01

of their contribution score in the event. As it works right now, it is just simply a

• 26:06

matter of how much time you've participated in the event as a percentage of the total

• 26:10

time of the event. Very nice. And so as that kind of as that winds down, people will be,

• 26:17

you know, granted a gold, silver, bronze tier kind of reward status, and that will be the

• 26:22

entitlement for the types of rewards they get from these events. And really, that's

• 26:26

just going to determine the reward table that they're going to get. And then each player

• 26:29

is going to roll their own reward table independently. Very nice. I hope I'm going to get rewarded

• 26:35

for all the healing I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you deserve it. Raid leader. Yep.

• 26:42

Our timer is up and Corvin, the crusher appears to be on the way. Oh, God, he's coming. All

• 26:50

right. We're going to need healing almost immediately. Oh, my God, there's a lot. I'm

• 26:57

going to try to sleep some of them. Oh, never mind. There's multiple balls of lightning.

• 27:03

See if I can line this up right. You can try and use the wraps as best I can. Man, this

• 27:16

is really great. I am on fire. We have them in a choke point right now. We definitely

• 27:20

want to keep them away. Oh, there's birds. We want to keep them away from the caravan

• 27:23

and in this choke point. I got him to trigger the trap over here. I'm hitting them with

• 27:27

a lot of A.O.E.s right now. And the only objective here, as you can see from the tracker, is

• 27:34

to kill Corvin. So until Corvin goes down. Yeah, I'm trying to prioritize their healing

• 27:40

and DPS so that we can have a better chance here. I think with the raid group of eight,

• 27:48

we seem to be set up for success here. Corvin, the crusher. I mean, Scott, would either of

• 27:55

you want to touch on the event difficulty tier and what we intend to do with that as

• 28:00

more players join the event? Well, as soon as people join in, I yeah, it just gets more

• 28:08

difficult. I don't know if you saw, but we had a toast saying that the event has progressed

• 28:18

from its original state as a group event to a raid level event. It was a veteran, veteran

• 28:25

level. And of course, that comes with more challenges, more optional objectives, but

• 28:30

also more rewards. So it's never it's never going to be like a bother to have other people

• 28:38

join you. It's it's all part of part of being in a like multiplayer environment is, you

• 28:45

know, the more friends join up with you, the better. Yeah, you know, I think it's cool

• 28:53

that you touched on the rewards because, yeah, the designers have have the ability, you know,

• 28:59

from a technical perspective to use the difficulty to your however they like in the event. They

• 29:03

can modify any aspect of the events difficulty or even, you know, the reward that you're

• 29:08

getting. They can query that in the reward table data. We're doing pretty good here.

• 29:13

This caravan hasn't really been taking much damage at all. Yeah, the tank was able to

• 29:18

intercept him at that choke point. So yeah, that seems to be working to this elite healer

• 29:24

is rough. Yeah, they should be very hard to kill. Some of the great shore swordsmen and

• 29:31

the archers are still alive. We can change that. We have the technology. There we go.

• 29:39

Oh, we did it. We win. Congratulations. The reward. Well, you know, there's also a grateful

• 29:48

settler here presenting us the reward. Maybe something to say. Let me talk to him. Greetings,

• 29:56

grateful settler. Praise Ariok. They might have killed us without your intervention.

• 30:03

Please help yourself. I will help myself. Thank you. What type of supplies are we talking

• 30:08

about? Oh, you're one of those heroes. Unbelievable. This is a difficult, difficult task. You know,

• 30:16

you just head over to Highwayman Hills and join the bandits. Even unbelievable claim.

• 30:22

Unbelievable. I am a hero in this. I'm a mayor of a local. No, my God. A shame it came to

• 30:29

violence. We are hopeful we could leave that behind on Sanctus. Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful

• 30:34

of that too. But you know, sometimes we can't just get what we hope for. So, whoa, we got

• 30:39

some wool. Yep. We got some wool. Okay. I got some wool. You're also granted on the

• 30:47

events completion. You're granted like a little stipend of golden experience just right away.

• 30:51

But items that can be looted off your body, they have to come from like a reward chest.

• 30:55

So every event will have its own reward cash at the end of it. You'll grab your materials

• 30:59

items from. And I actually got some ash and timber as my reward. Why'd you get Tim ash

• 31:05

and timber? Well, that rolled. I got that reward from my reward table. Maybe I participated

• 31:11

better than you. So I got a better resource. How dare you? I was out there doing a lot

• 31:16

of work. And it's got this. This NPC is also configured to actually interface with some

• 31:22

of the story art content to write if the story arcs were online. It's true. Yeah, I think

• 31:26

they it is online. Actually, it's just not active. Check it again. Oh, okay. Where am

• 31:32

I going? Talk to the guy again. I think you might have missed a dialogue option or it

• 31:35

didn't pop up. Okay. Okay. The top one. Who are these people? Why were they? Who are these

• 31:39

people? Let's see. They're desperate folks who prowl the hills. Captain Udoxia in Lion

• 31:47

Hold is looking into the matter. I should seek her out and find if there is a better

• 31:51

way I could help around here. You know what I will do. Okay, here we go. I see a lot of

• 32:02

different placeholder rewards. A bridge too far. Yeah, the rewards for the for a lot of

• 32:08

the quests are still not fully done yet. But the events do hook into all of our story

• 32:15

art content. So if there are story arcs online, we can like since our quests are nonlinear,

• 32:20

this can help you kind of into those quests. If they're online, this event can happen whether

• 32:25

or not the story is online. But if it is, you can pick up the like, leave in to that

• 32:31

quest from him. If you're not, you know, if you haven't been to Lion Hold in a while since

• 32:34

the story arc has started. Very cool. And so obviously, you know, people saw a little

• 32:40

bit during this event that the adaptive difficulty was predicated on the number of participants

• 32:46

that opt in to to to partake in this event, right? Correct. Yes. So as more players join,

• 32:56

the event does get more difficult with we went from the regular mobs to the elite mobs

• 33:02

in Corvin's Entourage. Some of them can be, you know, more, more enemies to fight. Some

• 33:09

can have completely different stages or mechanics, depending on which what the event actually

• 33:13

is and what your objectives are for that event. And these these events are based off of different

• 33:21

predicates within the world state. So, for example, this particular event was a caravan

• 33:24

that was moving throughout the world. And as you as we said in the beginning, it was

• 33:27

based off of the activity heat map of players within this area. But this type of event,

• 33:33

this caravan event that was transiting goods popped up because nearby nodes may have either

• 33:38

been advancing the relationship between each other or there might have been a trade caravan

• 33:43

that got kicked off in the past. And we're representing kind of that that theming within

• 33:49

the world by these event types. Correct. Yes. So events are predicated by things that players

• 33:54

are doing, whether that is node development, trade agreements between nodes, all of that,

• 34:00

like relationships between nodes. I mean, so it could be more than just that could be

• 34:04

war states or anything like that as well. So I noticed that even though we succeeded

• 34:10

in the event, we're still in our event raid group. Scott, what's the thought behind that?

• 34:13

Are we supposed to go and adventure with our new group right now? If we so desire, if we

• 34:18

so desire? Yeah, the event ending doesn't dissolve the open party for the event. The

• 34:23

open parties have some sort of default like party configurations that can't be changed.

• 34:29

So they'll be stuck with a group and stuff like that. But we do try to encourage people

• 34:33

to continue to stick together and play together. The game the game is hard. So it's good to

• 34:39

put it's good to play friends. Yeah, I just left the raid. I don't want to play with you.

• 34:45

He's going to join the bandits. I called it. Yes, I'm looking for the highway men who bandage

• 34:49

it. Very cool. Okay. And then obviously we saw during the event, there are obviously

• 34:55

multiple stages that exist. Each of those stages having unique mechanics associated

• 34:59

with them. There are a lot of different types of events. I mean that you and the narrative

• 35:04

team and Scott that you guys are working on creating each of those event types will have

• 35:08

different similar stages like we saw there was a trap stage here that we can set up.

• 35:13

Is it intended that these stages are going to provide players with kind of downtime to

• 35:17

recuperate and also perhaps set up and strategize how they want to address the upcoming challenge?

• 35:23

Well, I don't really know about you, but I'm my heart's beating right now. I feel like

• 35:28

we've been challenged and of course there's going to be moments where there are like less

• 35:36

less challenges which rely less on your class kit than usual. But I think that in general,

• 35:44

if you want to like really get down and understand the story and appreciate the world, then probably

• 35:52

you're going to want to focus more in the story arcs where you can take things at your

• 35:56

own pace. We have we have some events that do other things like there could be some that

• 36:01

are just puzzles. We have an event in here that is actually just like you can attend

• 36:07

a funeral for just an NPC that can pop up and there isn't actually any combat to do

• 36:12

in that one. Rewards are adequately scaled. There are events in here that are just kind

• 36:17

of for flavor and for fleshing out the world a little bit to that you can participate in

• 36:20

and learn more about. Yeah, I think there are going to be some moments where where you

• 36:24

might be like frustrated that an event is like obscuring something that you want to

• 36:28

get to like a NPC that you need to talk to for your quest or something. So then then

• 36:34

gathering people to help you is going to be really useful. Awesome. Very cool. And that

• 36:40

that event there at the last stage had kind of like a little mini boss dude. Is that kind

• 36:46

of a component of all events that you guys are intending to incorporate or just kind

• 36:50

of some events will have those mini bosses? Some will have them. There's going to be a

• 36:55

whole lot of these and they're going to be at different tiers of challenge and you know,

• 37:01

kind of, I guess, like power level tiers. You know, they're not all going to be, you

• 37:08

know, defeating the, you know, and all dragon being at the end. Some are just, you know,

• 37:15

about helping people. There's some are about just building up the world of Verra, which

• 37:21

is a very difficult and challenging place as people are trying to resettle it. There's

• 37:25

there's all kinds of tiers for different levels of heroism. I'm helping the small time people

• 37:29

to downing giant foes. And these are obviously a bit different than what people have seen

• 37:36

previously with Carfinn where we showed off kind of the story arc system that fundamentally

• 37:40

changes a particular location or area for an extended period of time that exists within

• 37:46

stages that are might be multi days in length. These are more bite sized, kind of digestible

• 37:52

end to end 20 minute gameplay, right? Right. Definitely shorter than a story arc, which

• 37:58

yeah, as you said, as you mentioned before, is meant to be taken kind of at a slower pace.

• 38:02

Can your individual path through the story arc is a little bit more measured, like you're

• 38:06

less reliant on like the pace of the actual story arc. It's more about your own personal

• 38:12

paces through the quests. And then as the story arc advances over time, like over the

• 38:17

course of days, then you can dive back into it and get more involved in it again. Very

• 38:23

cool. And then if there are people who might be problematic to a particular event, like

• 38:33

this Jindrak guy. Oh, OK. I think it's triggering again. Like this Jindrak guy, we could like,

• 38:40

you know, attack them or something. Oh, we could. Yes. If you were aligned with the bandits,

• 38:46

maybe. And there are some events that do have you pick sides in PvP. Yeah. You know, whenever

• 38:52

Steven joined this event, he had one option to just merge us into the event raid group.

• 38:56

This was a PvE event. But there are going to be events with sanctioned PvP where there

• 39:03

are multiple team options to join. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. OK, very cool. Well,

• 39:11

I'll let Jindrak live this time. Guys, that was a super exciting event showcase. I know

• 39:17

that the community loved to kind of see this stuff. Obviously, events are an integral component

• 39:21

of making the world feel kind of dynamic and representative of what is happening around

• 39:26

the area. It gives people insight into particular locations and the type of activities that

• 39:32

might be occurring. But it also gives really interesting ways for us as players to interact

• 39:36

with that environment and effect change as well and be rewarded for that activity. I

• 39:42

think it's super cool. You guys did a great job with standing up the event system and

• 39:46

populating the world with really compelling activities. So thank you for showing us a

• 39:50

little bit of the work you guys have been doing towards Alpha 2. I know that the community

• 39:54

loves it and we'll be back on stream to talk a little bit more about this. All right. Thanks

• 40:00

for having me, Stephen. Bye. Thanks, Stephen. Absolutely. Bye, everybody.

• 40:05

Whoops. Welcome back. Why'd you say whoops? Oh, my light went out. In the office, it went

• 40:18

out right at the end there. Oh, no. Hopefully the Internet's going to be OK. It's just light.

• 40:24

I will play the video in the background so you all can watch that. We do have some questions

• 40:29

from chat about some things. So one of the things was to kind of set expectations for

• 40:36

parties. We did talk about how when you disband a party or when you end it, you know, we do

• 40:44

encourage you to group up and stay together. But people are wondering if they have to like

• 40:49

fully reform their parties or what the plan is in regards to that.

• 40:53

Yeah. So there is an option, as we said at the end, to kind of stick around in that raid

• 40:58

and to go off and do some additional things with each other. Obviously, we want to encourage

• 41:02

players to kind of cooperate and work with one another. That is an MMO after all. And

• 41:07

that is the name of the game. But at the same time, if people want to convert back into

• 41:11

a party or if they want to move from that raid, they are more than welcome to do so.

• 41:15

Right. And then what happens if someone joins the event and then like goes MIA, goes to

• 41:22

get a coffee, goes to the bathroom, leaves? Does that still keep the difficulty?

• 41:29

Yeah. So there is a way that we kind of heat map player activity during the event to help

• 41:35

inform that difficulty. It's not just going to be based purely off of the number of participants

• 41:40

within the area or within the raid. That's something that is dynamic and scales accordingly.

• 41:46

But the idea here is that, you know, we can't necessarily predict the number of players

• 41:50

that are going to be participating in these types of events, of course, because not only

• 41:54

is it opt in, but it's also kind of situationally and locationally relevant to the player activity.

• 42:01

Now, those events kicked off based off of local player activity. As you saw here, we're

• 42:06

killing the bears, we're killing the spiders. That was one of the predicates that kind of

• 42:09

kicked this local event off. The event was then thematically relevant to kind of activities

• 42:14

that were happening around the zone. And that was like relationship between nodes that was

• 42:18

progressing that caused this theming to be about a caravan being assaulted by bandits

• 42:25

for supplies. And so it kind of gives you a touch point to the rest of the world and

• 42:29

what's happening there. But we want to scale that difficulty to a degree, right? And we're

• 42:35

not talking about like scaling up the players power or scaling down the power of the NPCs,

• 42:40

but rather how many additional spawners start to activate, what different types of NPCs

• 42:45

start to join? Are they going to be elites? Is there the boss? Right? Those types of those

• 42:49

types of things are scalable as part of the event system.

• 42:54

Cool, and then are you able to heal the caravan settlers and things like that? I know that

• 43:01

you were, but we want to clarify like that you do need to protect them to some extent.

• 43:08

Are there implications for if you don't like if a bunch of people die that you're supposed

• 43:12

to be guarding? Will you get less reward? What's the for sure there is the ability to

• 43:17

fail. I know that that is a strange concept for a lot of us nowadays playing more modern

• 43:23

games, but there is absolutely a way to fail. And some of those ways include how you're

• 43:30

going to expend resources, not just for your fellow players, but for some of the objectives

• 43:35

that might be present within the event as well. And those resources that mainly being

• 43:40

your mana in this circumstance with regards to healing those those NPCs is, I think, a

• 43:47

relevant and interesting component that makes it a little bit more dynamic.

• 43:50

All right, and then do the events have cooldowns or could players force the event to spawn

• 43:58

endlessly? Events absolutely do have cooldowns. They cannot be forced to spawn repeatedly

• 44:05

over and over again. Those cooldowns are not just something that's based on a timer. They're

• 44:10

also predicated on certain actions occurring within the world once more or at different

• 44:16

times. And so again, the most important thing about this system is that when we're talking

• 44:22

about being out in a hunting grounds or being out, you know, transiting across the world,

• 44:29

these events are constantly popping up around the zones, right? And they kind of follow

• 44:34

player activity and movement. And there's a whole host of different types of events

• 44:39

from a content standpoint that reflect to the state of the world. And so it's important

• 44:46

that like as players are doing these things, these are additional levels of experience

• 44:51

grants and reward tables that can be accessible based off of cooperation with other players

• 44:57

in the area. All right, and then the last one here is what

• 45:04

would have happened if the raid group failed the event? I know that you talked a little

• 45:08

bit about this before, but would something have happened if we wouldn't have saved?

• 45:14

Yeah, so so events that get kicked off. If you would not have saved everybody, if this

• 45:20

event would have failed and actually it failed many times in testing, but if this event would

• 45:27

have failed, it would have contributed to a world state tracker, right? And and events

• 45:32

kind of can roll. The event outcome can inform other events as predicates as well, right?

• 45:42

And when you get enough events that are being failed. When you get enough events that are

• 45:48

being failed, that can trigger a bigger event. And when a bigger event fails, that can trigger

• 45:54

potentially a story arc and that can trigger potentially atrophy events like there's it's

• 46:02

a cascading foundational system that serves to predicate how other instances of dynamic

• 46:12

reactive world. Activities respond to player choices, player efforts, player successes

• 46:21

and failures, right? What we're building is a very comprehensive, responsive world, and

• 46:26

I know a lot of times in different games you hear the buzzwords of like dynamic and responsive

• 46:30

and reactive and you know whatever, but we are building the mechanics to inform those

• 46:37

systems from a very scaling foundational perspective which can culminate into big. Server changing

• 46:47

things happening right and this is at the very ground level of that overarching system.

• 46:54

You guys saw a little bit of the story arc system with carfin and how it fundamentally

• 46:59

changed the visuals of that of that area. But what can help inform carfin story arc

• 47:06

kicking off is how these smaller feeding events what the outcome of those are right so so

• 47:13

that's that's how we get the world that feels. Respective of player action. Yeah, there's

• 47:20

things that happen that have a domino effect of other things happening and depending on

• 47:25

how that thing happened it may change and it doesn't always have to be the same things

• 47:30

that are always happening. This is why when we said that every server will kind of pretty

• 47:34

much be very very different from another server it would be very very unlikely that they will

• 47:40

be exactly the same and in the same state because you have to take very specific actions

• 47:46

at the same time to make those things line up that way. Of course the video that we have

• 47:53

will be up in 4k so if you want to see that you can head on over to our YouTube channel

• 47:57

after the stream. I'm going to stand up and move around so I can get my light. Yeah, because

• 48:01

the motion lights. Someone should someone at the office come wave around. It will not

• 48:10

pick me up even though I'm moving around. That's funny you don't move fast enough you're

• 48:14

like sloth mode. And of course we also have a forum event update feedback thread as well

• 48:21

so if you have any thoughts after watching this and of course after you're able to like

• 48:26

kind of move things around on the live stream or watch it either on Twitch or YouTube you

• 48:30

can feel free to toss your feedback our way. We of course will be compiling a report for

• 48:35

development in order to ensure that they get all the information from what you guys what

• 48:40

your thoughts are so share those with us. And with that we shall move over to studio

Studio Update with Alpha Two Clarifications

• 48:47

update. Studio update yes. It's funny actually I was watching in chat somebody said how can

• 48:57

I become a developer for this? Yeah, come work with us. That's a nice little segue.

• 49:06

Yeah studio update things are going great at the studio. We are continuing to grow.

• 49:11

We are ending our our milestone actually this week actually I think it ended the end of

• 49:17

last week. We are currently transitioning into our next milestone right now. It ends

• 49:21

the 29th today. 29th oh it ends today that's right. And next week we are having about 20

• 49:29

of our remote employees are flying in for our milestone seven preparation and kickoff

• 49:34

in San Diego and we're gonna have some fun events with the team doing some bowling nights

• 49:41

and some full day reviews of our milestone and play testing and it is an exciting time

• 49:49

here at the studio and I wanna take a moment to. I wanna take a moment to talk a little

• 49:59

bit about the state of our industry and you know be respective of the fact that you know

• 50:07

not everywhere in the gaming industry in the tech industry in general right now the economy

• 50:11

is obviously a point of concern. There's a lot of layoffs that have been happening and

• 50:16

and it is a it is a very unfortunate and terrible thing. Of course I made a little bit of a

• 50:21

statement on Twitter yesterday and on LinkedIn you know our hearts go out to those individuals

• 50:27

and and it is an it is an incredible experience to be a part of teams that create the magic

• 50:33

that games are because really they are magical. I mean games are games are a very important

• 50:40

part of our lives right. It is important to have a work life balance and part of of everyone

• 50:46

out there who are in this audience that that get to have downtime and experience games

• 50:51

with their friends and their families and and and and kind of de-stress with that. It

• 50:55

takes a lot to make those things and it takes a lot of effort and dedication and commitment

• 51:02

and when things outside of your control and outside of your power impact your ability

• 51:07

to do that it's obviously a moment of pause and reflection and Intrepid intends and strives

• 51:13

to be one of those places that takes that takes sustainable growth practices as part

• 51:22

of building up our company and our team in the efforts to deliver this product. Now of

• 51:28

course MMOs are the biggest game you can make. Our MMORPG is probably one of the more ambitious

• 51:36

ones and from the get-go we knew and you guys knew from a community perspective that this

• 51:42

was going to be a journey and it continues to be that but every time we onboard a new

• 51:47

person to this company to our team to our Intrepid family and I know that's a hot button

• 51:52

they should even use that word sometimes in a work setting but I that is the type of feeling

• 51:58

we we we try to achieve at Intrepid. Every time we onboard someone new we do so with

• 52:05

the conscious effort to to to know what the end goal is in our development journey and

• 52:13

to treat that team member that family member with the type of of respect for their work

• 52:21

and and participation in this project right and so if you know somebody that's been impacted

• 52:30

by these layoffs recently if if you guys are in the ecosphere of of Twitter and or LinkedIn

• 52:37

of these developers who are some of your favorite developers that have worked on projects in

• 52:40

the past and you've seen the the product of their toils then make sure to send them a

• 52:46

message and let them know that we exist that Ashes of Creation is a project and that we

• 52:51

have a lot of positions that are open and if they don't see a position that's open they

• 52:56

can go to Intrepid Studios.com to our careers page and they can submit their resume and

• 53:00

their portfolio and experience and we will spend the time and effort in order to evaluate

• 53:07

their potential on the team so you know that is that is something that I think is important

• 53:12

and it's a it's a rough time out there right now for sure and our hearts go out to the

• 53:16

people that are impacted by some of these layoffs but but things are looking good here

• 53:21

at Intrepid Studios and we continue to move forward and their next milestone is going

• 53:24

to be a big one and with that being said well I would yeah I think that I have some notes

• 53:33

here too from our HR team which I'm not going to share everything they gave me because some

• 53:36

of that is like private information for us but I think one of the cool things is I'm

• 53:40

a data junkie as someone who does a lot of marketing stuff we have an insanely great

• 53:48

attrition rate comparatively to the industry so I mean for us we're at like 3.4% people

• 53:54

are going to come and go they're going to have reasons why they want to maybe they're

• 53:56

going to get paid more in another company or they they want a different type of job

• 54:00

and we don't have that available for them although we do accommodate quite greatly for

• 54:04

people or they want to be somewhere else.

• 54:07

3.4% though that's not bad what's the industry average?

• 54:10

The software development or the the global average is 38.9% and the software development

• 54:20

specifically is 57.3% so we are we are extremely low because people really do enjoy working

• 54:28

here and I know it is cliche when it sounds cliche when you say family but Steven and

• 54:32

John really treat us all like family like there is love and care there that I have not

• 54:37

always had at other companies so thank you.

• 54:41

Well absolutely we we love you and we love our team and it is something special that

• 54:46

I think we built here at this company and it definitely feels like that.

• 54:51

I think it would be great for us to talk a little bit about a common discussion point

• 54:58

that obviously you and the community and we're going to do that before the art oh before

• 55:02

the art oh okay okay my bad I'm sorry we can do it no we can do it if you want okay okay

• 55:06

yeah do it now.

• 55:08

So wildin you guys.

• 55:10

As you guys know we have reserved our announcement for dates until we are certain that we can

• 55:20

hit them we've we've been burned in the past with that we took our licking so we learned

• 55:24

and no more date Steven until correct it's happening I've been a good boy I've been a

• 55:29

very good boy without having said any haven't said any dates and what I would like to do

• 55:35

is as I see often in the community with a lot of different conversations with content

• 55:43

creators you know when is Alpha 2 going to be is it this year is it next year is it you

• 55:48

know 2030 you know kind of wild speculation that I think I have attempted to address by

• 55:56

saying Alpha 2 is not years away but it's also not right around the corner and so as

• 56:03

we grow closer to Alpha 2 we will give a definitive date the next time you hear from us about

• 56:11

when Alpha 2 is going to be it's probably going to be delegated to a particular quarter

• 56:15

and then when we're probably a few months away we will have the date in mind but for

• 56:19

now I can definitively tell you that Alpha 2 is going to be and cue the video.

• 56:34

That wasn't too bad that's pretty good so guys we can say that from now on when people

• 56:54

talk to you about when Alpha 2 is going to be it is no longer a question of if but when

• 57:01

next year Alpha 2 will be rolled out for public testing we have a number of different testing

• 57:07

events that are going to be participating over the.

• 57:09

Can I make some clarifications for things?

• 57:11

Absolutely.

• 57:12

It includes some of that so the exact date as Stephen said will be provided in the future

• 57:17

and of course when we do provide that date we will also give you guys further information

• 57:22

in regards to testing schedule what's included in Alpha 2 because I know that that's where

• 57:26

this is going to go next and also the NDA spot testing that will be before Alpha 2 we

• 57:35

will have first one with our PI members then we'll have some with our Alpha 1 users and

• 57:41

then our Alpha 2 users and of course Alpha 2 will not be NDA'd but that spot testing

• 57:47

will be NDA'd so keep that in mind and then note that Alpha 2 is only accessible for players

• 57:53

who have Alpha 2 access so just because you had Alpha 1 access does not mean that you

• 57:57

will have Alpha 2 access so make sure that you do have Alpha 2 access in your inventory

• 58:02

it'll say Alpha 2 if you do but you will be able to partake in pre-tests because that's

• 58:08

technically still Alpha 1.

• 58:10

Yes, absolutely and guys I want to talk to you a little bit about setting expectations

• 58:15

right appropriately anytime you're delivering a software as big as even what Alpha 2 is

• 58:25

there's going to be bumps, there's going to be hiccups, there's going to be things that

• 58:28

we don't account for and that's just the nature of the beast part of that is many communities

• 58:36

don't have an opportunity to see those bumps and hiccups because projects keep things very

• 58:40

tight to the chest we have since the get-go decided not to take that approach and instead

• 58:46

take the good, bad, and ugly approach which is you guys get to see that stuff and so as

• 58:54

we're moving towards Alpha 2 in 2024 you can expect to see part of our development updates

• 59:00

we'll be showcasing of course continually these systems you know some of those systems

• 59:04

will be very big some of those systems will be smaller but our intent is to get feedback

• 59:08

on them and kind of get experiential feedback especially so that we can help inform the

• 59:13

revisions and the iterations that we do to them that's why we do these development updates

• 59:17

right it's not just Margaret and I love being here with you guys and being a part of this

• 59:22

process but we don't do it because we love it we do it because it is an integral component

• 59:27

of making a good product right and that is our philosophy.

• 59:32

So with that being said I can hopefully now put to rest some of the question marks that

• 59:39

arise out of the when is Alpha 2 going to be we definitively now.

• 59:43

I mean they're still going to ask.

• 59:44

I know I know of course now.

• 59:45

As soon as January 1st goes they're going to be like so what date is it?

• 59:49

We have moved the discussion out of the realm of years into the realm of months which month

• 59:54

is it going to be right?

• 59:57

So that is I think a positive outcome.

• 59:59

And like what Stephen said we will our next update will give you a quarter and then we

• 1:00:03

will provide dates after that so just keep that in mind there is going to be a progression

• 1:00:10

of that information.

• 1:00:11

Absolutely absolutely.

• 1:00:12

Yeah very cool what a time to be alive.

• 1:00:16

I know it has been it has been wild a wild time in general for all of us but yeah does

• 1:00:24

anything else on the studio update?

• 1:00:26

Yeah I think we got we caught everything so art stuff look at pretty art stuff let's do

Art Update

• 1:00:31

it yeah let's do it let's look at art.

• 1:00:34

No I just got a message from our web team that the website is currently getting hit

• 1:00:38

hard oh no.

• 1:00:40

Great probably because everyone's like let's buy a package.

• 1:00:45

The packages are going to be available till January 17th so so it'll be okay.

• 1:00:51

I probably shouldn't have said that on the stream then it would just exacerbate the problem.

• 1:00:56

Or the the career page people might have been going to that too.

• 1:00:59

So first and foremost we've got the deep wood syrinx syrinx I think is what it's called

• 1:01:06

it's like an instrument of some sort which is really cool and that now has has its model

• 1:01:12

and you may have seen these little potion traps on the ground that were created.

• 1:01:19

I love seeing the work in progress images so I always like sharing that stuff with you

• 1:01:24

guys and so that's what.

• 1:01:27

And this is what you saw in the game yeah.

• 1:01:31

Very cool.

• 1:01:33

And then we've got the.

• 1:01:35

By the way notice the kind of styling of the magical fantasy the kind of magical realism

• 1:01:42

not so much too far on the steampunk side not too much magic tech side but you know

• 1:01:48

it's still keeping even doesn't like a fantasy.

• 1:01:51

You know it's not that I don't like it I think that there's a lot of really cool interesting

• 1:01:55

kind of steampunk iteration that's done in these games it's just I'm a I'm a high fantasy

• 1:02:01

guy.

• 1:02:02

Yeah we had some like designers who were trying to like plot out steampunk I was like no that's

• 1:02:08

not Ashes of Creation move on.

• 1:02:12

But next up we've got the Legionnaire outfit which now has a model as well.

• 1:02:18

I think it should rotate.

• 1:02:20

I believe I have a turntable for this as well.

• 1:02:25

Very different type of armor I know some people weren't sure how they felt about this set

• 1:02:30

but the lore for it is really cool and some of the other pieces that they have for this

• 1:02:34

set are coming along really well.

• 1:02:36

So I'm excited to share those.

• 1:02:40

Next up is we've been working out some options for Vec plate and this is kind of a little

• 1:02:45

preview of one of the directions.

• 1:02:48

Oh I love the Vec models and the plate looks so good.

• 1:02:53

Yeah I think Jan has been working on this and killing it.

• 1:03:00

Yeah that looks great and then we have the face masks the helmet looks the helmets.

• 1:03:07

We have the turntable for this people can kind of see how that looks.

• 1:03:12

And look you can see the model looks great.

• 1:03:15

So this is the female model and then I will also show you it on the male.

• 1:03:25

And remember guys as you guys are seeing these different armor sets you know the armors that

• 1:03:32

we work through of course gradually increase in tier right based off of kind of the level

• 1:03:38

that we're provisioning the armors for.

• 1:03:41

Now is this a cosmetic set or was this this is not armor.

• 1:03:44

No so this is in-game achievable.

• 1:03:48

And I believe that this armor judging off of its silhouette is probably going to be

• 1:03:53

about a tier two armor from a tier five system right.

• 1:03:57

So this would probably be something as a Vec that you would have access to between levels

• 1:04:02

like 15 to 25 ish roughly.

• 1:04:05

Yeah beyond knows he can DM me and I can update it but yeah very very cool.

• 1:04:12

And then of course we've got the silk fur dune hunter that Jinsey has made the model

• 1:04:17

for and it looks so cute.

• 1:04:19

I mean they just make like the concept art look exactly like the character.

• 1:04:24

It's wild to me how amazing they are.

• 1:04:28

Who else is excited to ride this like oh my gosh so cute.

• 1:04:36

And with that we're ready to head on over to our Q&A.

Outro and Q&A

• 1:04:41

I'll play the video in the background just so you have something to watch whilst we answer

• 1:04:48

some of y'all's questions from the forums.

• 1:04:51

The first one here is from plastic lemons.

• 1:04:54

Don't eat those.

• 1:04:55

I asked about Mayor history.

• 1:04:58

I once tried to eat a plastic grape when I was a little kid.

• 1:05:02

It did not go well.

• 1:05:03

I did the same thing.

• 1:05:05

I didn't try to eat it though I just chewed on it.

• 1:05:07

Yeah well I couldn't eat it so I spit it out but yeah I was chewing on it.

• 1:05:11

I thought it was a real.

• 1:05:12

I used to love those little plastic grapes.

• 1:05:14

I would just grab them and chew on them.

• 1:05:16

Oh just like okay.

• 1:05:18

Interesting.

• 1:05:19

You learn something new every day.

• 1:05:23

See somebody just said lol same.

• 1:05:26

Really?

• 1:05:27

Yes thank you.

• 1:05:28

Thank you Rakers maker.

• 1:05:29

Oh my gosh.

• 1:05:30

Maybe you guys are teething or something.

• 1:05:31

You're like a little chew toy.

• 1:05:32

Somebody else said that explains a lot.

• 1:05:33

That's so good.

• 1:05:34

There's too much sharing.

• 1:05:35

Too much TMI.

• 1:05:36

We have Mayor history which is will players have a way to see who past mayors of their

• 1:05:51

node were like a little like a log.

• 1:05:54

That'd be cool.

• 1:05:55

Yeah absolutely yeah so something.

• 1:05:57

And all their actions.

• 1:05:59

Well maybe not all their actions but.

• 1:06:02

We can dream guys.

• 1:06:04

It is something that we do intend to provide obviously historical references within the

• 1:06:08

game of not just the mayors of nodes but also you know server first downs of certain bosses

• 1:06:16

and this first like guild achievements and guild hall ownership like we want to you know

• 1:06:22

the achievement system should record things of note so that people are able to etch their

• 1:06:31

name or their guild in the history in the in the in the history of the server and mayorship

• 1:06:37

would be one of those things.

• 1:06:39

Very cool.

• 1:06:43

It would be cool if mayors could like leave a little note and then all the new mayors

• 1:06:47

get to see all the past notes.

• 1:06:48

Margaret was here just like etched in the desk.

• 1:06:55

Some might be helpful some might not be.

• 1:06:57

It's like what's that game.

• 1:06:59

Anyways moving on as a from node about node government wants to know are there plans for

• 1:07:06

official game supported node positions other than the mayor like a stable master or a procurement

• 1:07:13

officer.

• 1:07:14

That word's hard to say.

• 1:07:16

Are there other node based positions basically.

• 1:07:20

Yes there are other node based positions.

• 1:07:23

Some of the most of them relate to social organizational structures like the temple

• 1:07:30

and the social organization building that the node might construct.

• 1:07:35

Those are ladder systems of achievement that players can work through on a seasonal basis

• 1:07:40

to achieve the highest level of that for the particular node and by doing so they will

• 1:07:44

then have titles bestowed upon them which grants certain types of powers and benefits.

• 1:07:49

Nice.

• 1:07:50

Speaking of which I'm going to forward to one of the questions here from Caddack in

• 1:07:53

regards to social organizations.

• 1:07:55

Will progression in social organizations be permanent or must it be maintained like PVP.

• 1:08:02

There will be a portion of your social progression that does remain static but then when you

• 1:08:09

move into a section of the ladder system that's more competitive that section of achievement

• 1:08:18

will be ticking and seasonal and you'll have to repeat efforts there.

• 1:08:22

So you can achieve a certain status rank that will be permanent unless you choose to leave

• 1:08:26

the system and then there will be a section that's ladder based.

• 1:08:31

And then the next one here is about music.

• 1:08:34

DougBug27 wants to know cities in MMORPGs tend to have iconic music to match the aesthetic

• 1:08:43

of locations.

• 1:08:45

How do you expect Ashes of Creation and Bear McCreary specifically to create music to fit

• 1:08:50

nodes when they will be changing all the time?

• 1:08:54

And easy answer, predicates.

• 1:08:57

Well yeah it's a great question.

• 1:09:00

So Cat and Bear obviously we have a great process by which there are different levels

• 1:09:11

of associated soundtracks based off of defining features in the game.

• 1:09:18

So if we're talking about nodes then we're talking about what's the cultural representation

• 1:09:21

of that node.

• 1:09:23

Soundtracks and theming music will then be accompanied based off of the culture that

• 1:09:26

the node expresses.

• 1:09:28

If we're talking about biomes and we're talking about POIs, each of those will have distinctive

• 1:09:32

themes that are associated with them.

• 1:09:34

So when you're out in the wilderness or you're out at a specific POI, those will have soundtracks

• 1:09:38

that will play as well.

• 1:09:40

Each of those systems will encompass a layered effect that can reflect the stage of certain

• 1:09:48

types of events within an area.

• 1:09:50

So for example the POI that is Carfin, that will have a general theme for Carfin that

• 1:09:56

will play as you move into the area.

• 1:09:58

But depending on the effects of a particular story arc, we may weave in a layer of the

• 1:10:06

soundtrack that reflects perhaps the voice of the raid boss when she's present.

• 1:10:12

And if she's not that layer won't be weaved in.

• 1:10:15

So those soundtracks are constructed in such a way obviously where you can get a lot of

• 1:10:19

usage out of them and there are components and themings of those that can weave together

• 1:10:24

and layer together and it's intended to be something that not just as pleasant but informative

• 1:10:29

of the world as well.

• 1:10:31

And different states right?

• 1:10:32

Like if you're in combat.

• 1:10:33

Yes, correct.

• 1:10:34

There's combat.

• 1:10:35

Absolutely.

• 1:10:36

There's combat states as well.

• 1:10:39

Yes.

• 1:10:40

Speaking of music, our next question is from Song Rune and it's about bards.

• 1:10:46

What equipment slot does a bard's instrument take up?

• 1:10:51

It takes up the instrument slot.

• 1:10:54

Yes.

• 1:10:55

So there will be an instrument slot that can be available as well and the bard can equip

• 1:11:02

something there.

• 1:11:03

But that is obviously subject to change.

• 1:11:04

It is something that has been of heavy discussion within the combat team and the player character

• 1:11:09

team and how we want to facilitate instrumentation.

• 1:11:13

And it's something that we haven't yet really delved into from development perspective.

• 1:11:16

It's a little bit later on our prioritization list.

• 1:11:20

But the intent is that there would be an instrument slot.

• 1:11:22

All right.

• 1:11:24

And Killjoy from the forum wants to know about node taxes.

• 1:11:27

Since taxes are set by the mayor, is there going to be a way to see the tax rates in

• 1:11:33

different nodes from like a world map or something like that?

• 1:11:36

So you can decide like, hmm, where should I take my strawberries today?

• 1:11:40

Yes, absolutely.

• 1:11:41

Yes.

• 1:11:42

If you want to take your strawberry somewhere where the man isn't trying to pinch every

• 1:11:46

dime out of you, you can go into your world map and you can hover state over certain

• 1:11:50

nodes and you'll be presented with some basic information of which of course, taxation will

• 1:11:55

be a component.

• 1:11:57

And then as you arrive in that node, you will also have additional UI interface that can

• 1:12:02

present you with more granular data such as active items on the warehouse and active items

• 1:12:09

on the auction house in that location and different types of services presented by the

• 1:12:14

service buildings.

• 1:12:15

All right.

• 1:12:16

And then we've got from Grand Serpent about active blocking.

• 1:12:22

Has the team considered grapples or guard breaks to go along with the potential active

• 1:12:28

blocking?

• 1:12:29

So kind of like what the player is looking for and wondering is if there will be ways

• 1:12:33

to interrupt or cancel another player's active blocking.

• 1:12:36

So I'm blocking you.

• 1:12:37

Yeah.

• 1:12:38

For sure.

• 1:12:40

There is intended to be an interaction between different types of reactive and predictive

• 1:12:47

skill sets of which if a player is in a state such as an active block or an active tumble

• 1:12:53

state, there will likely be some types of abilities that interact with reacting to those

• 1:12:59

types of states and will either overcome, surpass or cancel out those states, particularly

• 1:13:05

as it relates to not just active blocking, but also potentially passive blocking as well.

• 1:13:09

And that would be something probably related to physical penetration values as a stat or

• 1:13:17

even CC breaks that could be relevant as well for those types of things.

• 1:13:21

I think that's on the radar for the combat team, but it's something they haven't or they

• 1:13:25

actually are, I think, exploring.

• 1:13:29

Exploring active blocking, right?

• 1:13:30

Yeah, I know.

• 1:13:31

You're not sure if the final answer is that we will have active blocking or not.

• 1:13:34

Well, I just had a discussion with the combat team last week with Trad and with Brian about

• 1:13:41

how we're going to implement the active blocking into the Alpha 2 kits.

• 1:13:47

And that is something we are moving forward with right now.

• 1:13:50

That's going to be tested with a stamina based system, which is universal energy, of course,

• 1:13:53

across all the different classes.

• 1:13:56

And yeah, that'll be something we showcase in a future live stream, I think.

• 1:14:00

Right now it's very much in development.

• 1:14:02

So stay tuned, everybody, in regards to that.

• 1:14:04

I know that that's a hot, like, I was like, we also probably should address active blocking

• 1:14:09

as a whole, because I know last time we talked about this, we were like, we're exploring

• 1:14:13

it.

• 1:14:14

Yes.

• 1:14:15

And of course, we are not only exploring it now, we are actually actively developing

• 1:14:19

for it and we'll be testing with it, I believe, this sprint.

• 1:14:21

And things may change from Alpha 2.

• 1:14:23

I mean, that's why we want you guys to get your hands on it, test stuff, give us your

• 1:14:26

feedback.

• 1:14:28

And we'll be looking at data for that as well.

• 1:14:30

Our next question here is from Go, asking about world map information.

• 1:14:36

Will players be able to view their server's current VASL node networks on a world map

• 1:14:42

through a general filter, a special node building or other means?

• 1:14:46

Like, can they filter and find things?

• 1:14:48

Like if I'm looking for a specific building, can I figure out which node has that?

• 1:14:52

So I know where to go.

• 1:14:53

Yeah.

• 1:14:54

The only real question there is kind of how that how the user collects that information,

• 1:14:59

whether or not it's readily presented to the player just by being a player in the world,

• 1:15:05

or if they have to travel to locations and update that locations.

• 1:15:07

In the past, we talked about having a library that was capable of facilitating players exchanging

• 1:15:12

information for map data like that.

• 1:15:15

But we've moved a little bit more in a direction of just presenting that information upfront

• 1:15:18

to the player because travel is such a meaningful portion of the game and we don't have fast

• 1:15:23

travel.

• 1:15:25

So I think that for Alpha 2, what's planned is that we're going to be showcasing kind

• 1:15:30

of the intricate details of services offered at these node locations from just a UI presentation

• 1:15:37

standpoint within the map.

• 1:15:40

And that's going to service players being able to kind of strategize about their about

• 1:15:45

their travels.

• 1:15:46

All right.

• 1:15:48

And then Imoxsator wants to know about gear bonuses.

• 1:15:52

Will there be equipment gear bonuses for either single pieces or entire gear sets that offer

• 1:15:58

unique abilities that could change how a class is played?

• 1:16:03

And I think there's like two part from our end.

• 1:16:08

So I guess the fundamental of that question is, are there certain types of bonuses that

• 1:16:13

could impact the way you play your class?

• 1:16:16

I think the answer to that is yes.

• 1:16:19

Because anybody can wear any armor.

• 1:16:22

Correct.

• 1:16:23

Yes.

• 1:16:24

But at the fundamental is like if I were to get a set bonus that gave me a 10 percent

• 1:16:31

crit modifier on my waterfall stat and now I'm like, you know, critting often with my

• 1:16:36

weapon attacks or with my abilities, like I might lean in more towards being a crit heavy

• 1:16:41

focused class because of that particular bonus.

• 1:16:45

Whereas what I think what they're asking for is, am I going to get a item that gives me

• 1:16:51

like a fundamental new ability chain rather than augmenting my existing ability sets?

• 1:16:58

Right.

• 1:16:59

And I don't think the intent is to provide something new from an ability perspective

• 1:17:03

with majority of our set bonuses.

• 1:17:05

Right.

• 1:17:06

The intent is that we are augmenting existing waterfall stats with set bonuses and there

• 1:17:11

are going to be active skills that do get associated with certain types of pieces of

• 1:17:16

armor and or weapons.

• 1:17:18

Those will be much on the higher end if they're an active ability that comes with those things.

• 1:17:23

But I still don't think that the intended impact of those types of abilities is for

• 1:17:27

us to radically redefine the way a particular archetype might play.

• 1:17:34

Those determinations are made within the archetype kit and within the secondary archetype kit

• 1:17:39

as well.

• 1:17:40

All right.

• 1:17:42

And then Lashing wants to know about experience.

• 1:17:44

Apologies real quick.

• 1:17:46

One person asked, what is a waterfall stat?

• 1:17:48

A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute, right?

• 1:17:51

So if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate,

• 1:17:57

that would be considered a waterfall stat, the critical rate.

• 1:18:00

Yeah, that terminology.

• 1:18:01

I'm sorry.

• 1:18:02

Usually I'm pretty good about catching that.

• 1:18:06

The next question is about experience debt from lashing.

• 1:18:09

Does experience debt at max level interact with rested experience?

• 1:18:14

So let's say I have experienced at max level.

• 1:18:16

Will I be able to use rest experience to gain that experience back?

• 1:18:21

Yes.

• 1:18:22

Yeah.

• 1:18:23

Rested experience is a modifier that occurs when you first receive the experience.

• 1:18:27

And then after that modifier happens, where that experience goes to buy down the debt

• 1:18:32

is what happens.

• 1:18:33

So if you have rested experience and you have experienced debt and you go out to collect

• 1:18:36

experience, you will be working that debt off faster because of the rested experience.

• 1:18:41

All right.

• 1:18:42

Cool, cool.

• 1:18:43

And with that, we have answered the questions from the forums.

• 1:18:46

Thank you all for submitting questions.

• 1:18:49

Every development update, we put out a new questions forum post.

• 1:18:53

So if you would like to get yours chosen, we pick 10 at random.

• 1:18:58

So make sure that you get your questions in and only ask one question.

• 1:19:03

Follow the rules.

• 1:19:05

And we will be selecting those for the next time.

• 1:19:09

But of course, as we wrap up today's, I can't believe if I feel like we've done so many

• 1:19:13

really long ones, that this feels very weird to be ending.

• 1:19:19

This was a this was a breathing stream.

• 1:19:22

And then next stream is going to be an exhale stream.

• 1:19:26

Yeah, I'm like, what is our next one?

• 1:19:31

Just kidding.

• 1:19:35

We do tease stuff on our social and things like that.

• 1:19:37

So if you want to know in advance, sometimes we do share that information earlier or on

• 1:19:42

our Discord and forums and things like that.

• 1:19:43

So definitely follow us in all the places where ashes of creation were super easy to

• 1:19:47

find our wonderful Peter, who is our social media manager does an amazing job keeping

• 1:19:52

that filled with content that you guys can all consume and interacting with you all.

• 1:19:57

So please, please go check those things out.

• 1:19:58

And of course, we're going to upload the full development update video tomorrow pending

• 1:20:03

the internet cooperates with us.

• 1:20:05

And of course, the 4k video for the gameplay segment will be out today.

• 1:20:09

And you can find those over on our YouTube channel.

• 1:20:11

And of course, on our next development update, if you want to be spotlighted for a comment,

• 1:20:15

make sure that you leave a comment and subscribe to our channel.

• 1:20:20

That way we can select you.

• 1:20:22

Oh, little little hint there.

• 1:20:25

Sorry, they said give hint.

• 1:20:29

There's your hint.

• 1:20:31

And of course, please head on over to our forums forums.

• 1:20:33

Ashes of creation.com.

• 1:20:35

We have a whole bunch of feedback requests over there to development updates that will

• 1:20:39

be our dev discussions that are going to be there for you to fill out as well as the events

• 1:20:44

update as well.

• 1:20:45

So event update forum thread, give us your feedback feedback.

• 1:20:50

The hint is that it's in the riverlands.

• 1:20:52

No, I'm kidding.

• 1:20:55

Too good.

• 1:20:56

I love it.

• 1:20:59

And then we also have the unseen order cosmetics that will be ending on July or January, January

• 1:21:04

17 2024 at 11am Pacific.

• 1:21:07

There's an FAQ with all the details of that.

• 1:21:09

And of course, as we noted here, alpha two is coming in 2024.

• 1:21:14

We are excited to have you all join us next year and is going to be very fun.

• 1:21:18

Our development team has been kicking butt and working hard and we are continuing to

• 1:21:23

do so.

• 1:21:24

And it is very exciting.

• 1:21:26

Of course, thank you so much for tuning in today.

• 1:21:29

We hope that you will come watch our next development update.

• 1:21:31

And thank you to Clayton, I mean, Scott, and all of the developers who have helped with

• 1:21:36

the events, event, event stream, and just Ashes of creation as a whole.

• 1:21:41

And of course, Steven for your time.

• 1:21:43

And we will see you all next month.

• 1:21:46

Bye everyone.

• 1:21:47

Bye.

• 1:21:48

Bye.

• 00:00

the

• 00:17

Hello everyone and welcome to our ashes of creation September update.

• 00:23

We hope that you are excited. I'm cozy. I've got my like, I know autumn sweater on. It's

• 00:31

this is the season is the season now we are finally in the autumn. Yes. It's my favorite

• 00:37

season. I love it so much. But of course, we have a wonderful show for you today. We

• 00:43

hope that you are excited. You've been waiting for a month. We've been waiting for a month.

• 00:47

We've got a lot of stuff that we've been doing internally. Maybe we'll talk a little bit

• 00:52

more about that on the studio update as well. But of course, today is a temporary agenda

• 00:59

is we have our reminders. We have an event update. And if you've been following us on

• 01:03

social, we've been letting folks know that is going to be a wave based combat. So get

• 01:07

excited for a little bit of combat action. I know folks are excited for that. I had a

• 01:12

lot of fun playing so yeah, we like like a mofo. And we've got our studio update.

• 01:22

Art update and Q&A as per usual. So jam packed. But hopefully today won't be as long. So you

• 01:31

know, just hopefully you have a good amount of snacks, some water. You don't need to buckle

• 01:36

in this time. We'll be a little shorter than normal. But of course, first we have some

• 01:42

quick updates and reminders. The first one here is that we do have a comment. So today's

• 01:48

comment spotlight from our YouTube video from our last development update is the idea behind

• 01:54

all these nodes are awesome, but I wonder how it will actually play out in the live

• 01:59

version. The problem is having player run or the problem with having player run towns

• 02:04

is that people come and go in video games. So will towns die out, etc. And this is from

• 02:09

name is too. So thank you name is for, you know, subscribing to our YouTube channel and

• 02:14

leaving a wonderful comment. Yeah, this is a good question. And fundamentally, you get

• 02:19

it a lot too. Absolutely we do. And it is it is something that's at the forefront of

• 02:24

how we, you know, design systems that are intended to provide player interaction and

• 02:30

player agency and player direction, right? One of the I wouldn't say downsides, but risks

• 02:37

of those types of mechanics and systems is that you do have the potential for either

• 02:42

bad faith actors. Excuse me, or just people who come and go as you said. And so, you know,

• 02:54

we incorporate as part of those designs, certain fail safes, certain protections, certain automated

• 03:01

progression that takes over when some of those decisions are lacking or are not made. And

• 03:07

those decisions can be defaulted. Now, of course, that would have a deleterious effect

• 03:13

on kind of the direction that a particular node might want to go because they're going

• 03:17

to be doing default behaviors or default actions as opposed to something that might be in line

• 03:21

with the strategic objective of that particular node or the specialization that the node has

• 03:26

previously been attempting to do. But that is why we have a regularly recurring election

• 03:32

period where players can take the reins of power and can elect someone else to come in

• 03:38

and participate and rewrite the ship, so to speak. So it is absolutely a component of

• 03:46

having player driven mechanics that there is an opportunity for things to be less than

• 03:50

ideal or less than strategic when certain bad faith actors or people leave. But there

• 03:58

are safeguards in place. Perfect. Hopefully that suffices for you. Name is too. I'm sure

• 04:08

you'll let us know what your thoughts are on it. And of course, if you do have thoughts

• 04:12

on any of these things, you can head on over to forums. We are very diligent about taking

• 04:16

player feedback. The next thing, speaking of player feedback, segue, we have some dev

• 04:24

discussions. The one that is currently out, we have our dream nodes. So if you have some

• 04:29

thoughts on what you would like your dream node to be, head on over and toss us your

• 04:34

feedback. And up and coming, we also will have a dev discussion about basic attacks

• 04:39

as well. So definitely, we would love to hear your thoughts. And this is a combination of

• 04:45

basic attacks and auto attacks as well, because I think in different games, people consider

• 04:50

these different things. So we have a lot of questions from the development team in regards

• 04:54

to how you would like to utilize those, whether you want to kind of stream them in between

• 04:59

your abilities or if you're not interested in that at all. So there will be a lot of

• 05:04

questions for you to answer there. And I do just want to emphasize that these dev discussions

• 05:10

are of critical importance to the development team. Obviously, the reason why, and I have

• 05:16

echoed this over the course of many years and then these development updates, but the

• 05:23

reason why it's so beneficial for us to partake in a transparent development process is because

• 05:28

it affords us the opportunity to collect that real time feedback and experiences and direction

• 05:34

to a degree from the consumers that we are creating this product for, from you guys,

• 05:40

the gamers, our community, right? So if you have the time to go and kind of give your

• 05:45

commentary on the things that you expect to see out of these types of systems, the experiences

• 05:50

that you've had in different games, what you've enjoyed about them, what you'd like to see

• 05:53

done differently, it is great because our community team and Margaret helps to shepherd

• 05:59

kind of all of these comments into an easily digestible format that the developers then

• 06:05

have an opportunity to see what you guys are saying. And that's something that I think

• 06:09

is super important to make sure that those touch points of communications between the

• 06:12

community and the development team is of critical importance to the development.

• 06:16

And I will say this as somebody who's worked in this industry for a very long time, I love

• 06:21

that Steven affords us that not every team gets, you know, two Q or two community managers

• 06:28

to be able to help with that. But Roshan and Bacchanar have been doing an amazing job and

• 06:32

getting resounding love from our development team in regards to their reports. So they

• 06:37

do a very diligent job in reading everything you guys post in all the spaces. So we really

• 06:43

appreciate it. And of course, to put a caveat on that as well, because I know there's the

• 06:47

counteract of that is that, of course, we're not going to do everything that players say.

• 06:53

You know, we do have a vision and direction of our product. And so we're going to try

• 06:57

to make the best decisions for us and what we want to create. But it is always nice to

• 07:01

make sure that we're all on the same page, because for the most part, that is that has

• 07:05

been the case. So just keeping that in mind.

• 07:09

Yeah, just to touch on that point real quick, the the elegance of filtering out the expression

• 07:15

from our player base who don't have, of course, in many cases, the experience of developing

• 07:20

a product like this, but have the experience of playing them and know what they like and

• 07:25

dislike. That is where the community team comes in and helps to filter out, you know,

• 07:31

kind of that feedback so that not only is it digestible, but that it's cohesive and

• 07:35

can make sense from a development perspective.

• 07:37

Yeah, it's, it's very well done. So thank you. Keep giving us your feedback. You know,

• 07:44

I think a lot of the times when you're a player of a game, you're like, why did they make

• 07:47

this decision? Well, we're sharing the journey with you. We're telling you why we're making

• 07:50

those decisions. And we're showing you each little bit as we move forward. So be a part

• 07:55

of it if it's something that you really want. And if you don't step away, it's okay. You

• 07:58

don't have to either, you know, make a decision that's best for you. Next up, of course, is

• 08:03

what are you giggling about? I'm sorry. I just saw someone in chat that's put in a picture

• 08:11

of me that ages over time into into gray.

• 08:15

You haven't seen that before?

• 08:16

No, I haven't seen that before.

• 08:17

Yeah, they've been using it on Discord too.

• 08:18

That's concerning and scary.

• 08:19

There's a lot of Steven memes out there. So some of them are pretty intricate videos

• 08:29

to Steven. He's like, I don't want to know. Next up, this is just a reminder, of course,

• 08:36

that the Unseen Order cosmetics, they are going to be our last preorder pack set. We

• 08:42

have an FAQ on our article or in our article. You can check that out at ashesofcreation.com

• 08:48

slash news and you'll see the Unseen Order section. This is the last preorder pack set

• 08:54

and it is going to end on January 17th, 2024 at 11am Pacific. This does not mean that we're

• 09:01

not going to ever do cosmetics ever again. Or that you're not going to ever have access

• 09:06

to Alpha 2 or Beta 1 or Beta 2 again, but there will just be different forms of how

• 09:11

you get access to that pending whether we think we can support more players for those.

• 09:16

Absolutely. And I do encourage as Margaret has in the past, take a look at the FAQ section

• 09:22

of that. You know, I went through the FAQ and provided as intricate as detailed answers

• 09:26

as I could regarding the potential for future pack sales. Obviously, that's predicated on

• 09:32

our internal and external testing periods that we will be incorporating over the course

• 09:36

of the coming time. It's important to note, the intent of these packages is not to elicit

• 09:43

a fear of missing out response by our community. That is why this last pack will be extended

• 09:50

to January 17th. January 17th. You got a lot of time. There's a lot of time there. In addition,

• 09:58

Alpha 2 will be a non-NDA'd testing period that you will have an opportunity to watch

• 10:06

and partake in from a viewership perspective, even if you're not participating from a playing

• 10:10

perspective. Alpha 2, I can't reiterate this enough, Alpha 2 is not an intended game experience.

• 10:18

It is a testing experience. It is something that players who are participating in Alpha

• 10:24

2 are assisting in the development of it. There may be wipes, there will be periods

• 10:29

of time where we're taking it down and we're iterating upon it. It is not intended to be

• 10:34

a fun experience per se, although I believe it will be a fun experience.

• 10:37

I think it will be fun.

• 10:38

I think it will be fun. But it is intended to test our core systems. It is intended to

• 10:44

test our network architectures. It is intended to prepare the game for an official launch,

• 10:50

so our prepares for betas.

• 10:52

And our core systems.

• 10:53

And our core systems. And to that end, do not feel like if you are not participating

• 10:58

in Alpha 2 that you're missing out on something. This is not integral to the play experience

• 11:05

you will have when the game launches. And so that's something that's very important.

• 11:08

I mean, look at the journey that we've had so far, right? See where the game was before

• 11:12

and where it's at now. Or if you saw the Alpha 1 footage, which is, you know, you can Google

• 11:18

that because that was also non-UNDA'd. You can see how far we've come from that, too.

• 11:24

Absolutely.

• 11:25

There's definitely going to be a journey here. And you can be part of that whether you're

• 11:30

in game or being able to watch and tell someone else what you want them to do.

• 11:36

Sure.

• 11:37

Maybe we can get the programmers to do a chat character where like you chat, try to make

• 11:43

the character do things would be fun. Maybe not for Alpha 2, but that could be a cool

• 11:48

experience. But yeah, just wanted to remind people that there is an FAQ. Make sure you

• 11:52

check that out, that this will be the last pack set for now. And we are thinking about

• 11:59

how we want to move forward with other potential shop stuff as well. I know exclusivity has

• 12:04

been a problem that people are concerned about. And I think in future shop items, we will

• 12:09

kind of remove some of that element so we can rotate in things. So if you missed it,

• 12:14

there will be an opportunity for you to get it again later rather than right now where

• 12:17

everything's very much exclusive. But that's kind of how we've had stuff set up. And with

• 12:24

that, I think we are on to our events update if you're ready.

• 12:29

Yes, I'm ready for it. Absolutely. So I didn't do a lot of prefacing this time in the video

• 12:38

to my dismay after the recording was completed because now of course that's a standalone

• 12:43

on YouTube and some people may not hear that this is a work in progress. But hopefully

• 12:47

I've said it enough prior to that, that it just carries forward.

• 12:50

I know.

• 12:51

But regardless, I know. But regardless, I do want to preface now that what you guys

• 12:56

are about to see is a bit different than what you saw with our story arc system. And it

• 13:04

is different from our commissions system. This is our event system. And to be clear,

• 13:11

what you're going to see is an example of the event system that showcases types of content

• 13:17

that can be popped up in the world around you based on predicates of what's happening

• 13:23

in the world. And this particular event that you're going to see a pop up of is with regards

• 13:29

to a destructed caravan that's having some wave assault by some bandits. And the reason

• 13:38

for that event kicking off is because in the background there might be negotiations, there

• 13:43

might be advancement in relationship status between nodes that cause the thematic element

• 13:50

of this pop up event being a automated caravan moving throughout the world or whatever that

• 13:56

hit the snag of the bandit encounter and players in the area around it have an opportunity

• 14:01

to participate. Now there's a lot of different predicate systems that are involved in the

• 14:05

event system and they correlate in some way, shape or form to some other types of world

• 14:11

states that are happening within Vera at the time and that give players an opportunity

• 14:16

to interact with those events and receive rewards and receive experience and receive

• 14:21

gold and receive some loot tables off of that. And these pop up kind of around the world,

• 14:26

right? So you're going to be seeing an example of that here in the upcoming Alpha 2. And

• 14:33

this is a video that Clayton and Scott and Aimee and a lot of others have obviously helped

• 14:38

to stand up the event system so that it is a very versatile way to deliver content to

• 14:44

the players. So as a disclaimer, of course, this is all a work in progress. This is still

• 14:49

an alpha state. The UI is pending additional development as is the visual effects and some

• 14:55

of the performance indicators. But this gives you an idea of what you can expect coming

• 15:00

in Alpha 2. So we do have an article of other events too. So if you want some more event

• 15:07

action, you can check that out. Oh, and real quick. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. I know

• 15:12

some people are constantly asking us about Alpha 2. We are going to have a little bit

• 15:18

of an announcement here at the end of the stream. Not too much hype, just giving a little

• 15:22

bit of direction with regards to expectations for Alpha 2. But we will talk about that after

• 15:27

the event showcase.

• 15:28

All right. See you on the flip side.

• 15:53

Hello everyone and welcome to another live stream from the glorious world of Vera. And

• 15:59

we have an exciting showcase to give you all today. We're going to be talking about our

• 16:05

event system. And I am actually joined by three of our absolutely wonderful developers

• 16:12

with whom you've spoken with in the past on some other live streams. We have one of our

• 16:17

glorious engineers, Clayton. Clayton, how you doing buddy?

• 16:20

Absolutely wonderful, glorious. What an introduction. I'm doing great. I know. Really, really, really

• 16:25

so many words to show off all of our hard work. So very excited to see it with you and

• 16:31

excited to chat with the community about it. I know you guys have been doing a lot of hard

• 16:35

work on this. We also have two of our wonderful designers. Scott, how you doing buddy?

• 16:41

Excellent. I'm very excited to be here.

• 16:43

Yay. And I'm me. I mean, how are you doing?

• 16:46

I'm good. Last time I was here, we took down two mocks, so I'm ready today. I'm playing

• 16:51

cleric again. So yeah, I got your back.

• 16:56

Thank you. Okay. So you heard it here first, folks. If I die, it's of course not my fault.

• 17:04

It would be the cleric's fault. No, but okay. So where are we? We are in a familiar biome.

• 17:11

Many of you guys should be expecting where we are. We are in the wonderful riverlands.

• 17:16

We are a little bit east of the last live stream location, which was the windstead node.

• 17:22

Yeah, I see carfen in the distance.

• 17:24

Yep. Carfen is even further east from windstead. So we're kind of sandwiched between windstead

• 17:28

and carfen right now. No big curse happening right now. So it's a nice day out.

• 17:33

Okay. So it's a nice day out. There's not like any type of blood curse or undead roaming

• 17:37

the area.

• 17:38

No, not at the moment. No.

• 17:39

Okay, very cool. And what are we doing here in the riverlands? Talk to me a little bit

• 17:45

about what has brought us out here. And I'm going to jump off my glorious steed here while

• 17:50

we talk about that.

• 17:51

Absolutely. So we're actually just out here to kill some mobs, grind some experience,

• 17:57

get some resources maybe out of the land here. And eventually the world should react to that

• 18:03

and we could potentially create an event here.

• 18:07

I see a web weaver. So okay, so our objective right now is we're going to be showing off,

• 18:14

obviously, the event system. And part of that event system is that it can take a whole host

• 18:20

of different predicates to kind of kick off different types of events. Clayton, talk to

• 18:24

me a little bit about what that means.

• 18:26

He's on me. He's on me. Yeah. As soon as I'm not dying. But yeah, so the event system,

• 18:34

it can query a lot of different aspects of the dynamic world state. Right now it's actually

• 18:40

just tracking player activity in the world and for this event in particular. And it's

• 18:48

looking for us to kill some stuff. So we're out here killing some stuff and eventually

• 18:51

the event should trigger once it's detected enough player activity.

• 18:57

Very cool. And this type of predicate that is essentially the activity map for killing,

• 19:04

yeah, the activity map. That's not the only way that these events can get kicked off.

• 19:08

There's a whole host of different ways that they can also get kicked off.

• 19:11

For sure. Yeah. So we have a really, really awesome system that the designers have access

• 19:15

to that lets them hook into really any dynamic world state and use that to inform the instantiation

• 19:24

or even just like the progression of any event.

• 19:28

Very cool. These spiders are gross.

• 19:34

Scott, what are some plans that you have for different predicates for instantiating some

• 19:41

of these events? Yeah. So obviously we just got this kind of

• 19:45

generic sort of kill one here that we can use for all sorts of different things for

• 19:49

tracking player activity. Nope, big bear time. We also are looking at the amount of resources

• 19:55

that players can harvest as a predicate. We have story arcs that are going on. So active

• 20:01

stories to cause different events to start. Yeah. Great caravans happening, relationships

• 20:06

between different nodes and also just the state of the nodes themselves.

• 20:10

Oh, you and let him beat me up here because it's kind of cool.

• 20:15

He's charging you. Oh, he will throw you around. Those bears can really catch you off guard

• 20:23

if you let them. Okay. So I see that a nearby event has started.

• 20:30

The predicate has been met. Oh, and I see now on the mini map we have

• 20:34

a little bit of a location for it. Yeah. So just south of us here, we were just

• 20:40

kind of the event has kind of kicked off because of the just us killing stuff around in the

• 20:45

area here. And we might see some visual indicators over

• 20:50

the hill here in a second. And so when one of these events kick off,

• 20:55

it's not just obviously notifying players based off of their proximity with the mini

• 20:59

map and with the UI toast that pops up. But also, as you said, Clayton, we have a visual

• 21:04

indicator in world that's also rooting the the event as well.

• 21:08

Yeah, for sure. You know, Scott can probably touch on, you know, the diegetic nature of

• 21:13

all of our narrative content and the the goals there. But oh, wait, hold on. Before we get

• 21:21

too close. I'm seeing that there's some gray shore archers and a gray shore swordsman.

• 21:27

Oh, OK. All right. Oh, should I join this event as a defender team?

• 21:32

I should definitely. Yes, that'll allow if some other players do come around while we're

• 21:38

playing, that'll allow them to join the event raid group with us. So we've effectively taken

• 21:45

the party that we had preformed and merged that into a new raid group.

• 21:52

OK, I slept a couple of these of the highway captains. There's some of them on the settlers

• 21:59

right now. OK, and the settlers are an objective type that exists within this particular archers.

• 22:07

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my God. There's a lot of no, they're sniping from up on top

• 22:12

of the rocks. Thanks, Amy. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I'm going to go for the long guns down.

• 22:19

Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. The event difficulty did change, though. That's why the event difficulty

• 22:27

is a good thing. It means we got back up. There are people here to help us. And oh,

• 22:31

yeah, I see them on the hill. They're coming down. They joined the raid.

• 22:35

We were we're distracting the bandits from the settlers right now. So that's good. None

• 22:41

of them have died. Caravan integrity is good. OK, I see the caravan integrity on the on

• 22:51

the event. No, no, no. It looks like they're mostly just going for the settlers right now.

• 22:57

Oh, no. Those poor settlers. We've we've kept them up. Nope. I just saw one die. Oh, God.

• 23:03

Two of them. Two of them went out at once. All right. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

• 23:11

They would have been fine. So our objective here is to protect the settlers while we eliminate

• 23:16

twenty times. OK. OK, but there's probably another wave coming. Yes, there's still some

• 23:26

shore. There's still some great shore people. Well, I see some of them coming from northeast.

• 23:32

There's an arsonist coming. There we go. There we go. Oh, and some from downhill northwest

• 23:37

too. Scott, why are they coming from the north? So we're actually pretty near one of our POI,

• 23:44

which is actually under bandit control. The aptly named Highwayman Hills is just over the

• 23:50

corner, just around the corner here. So they'll be attacking NPCs kind of in this area until

• 23:55

such a time as players deal with it via story. And the settlers are trying to keep these

• 24:04

guys alive, right? OK. All right. We did it. OK. OK. OK. So it says prepare for the final

• 24:13

assault. This is this is staged based off of our kind of our progress, our activity,

• 24:19

our success. What is this? Yeah. So we we defeated the requisite number of bandits there,

• 24:27

which is going to progress the stage here. And during this stage here, we can reset some

• 24:32

of the traps that the bandits used to initially destroy the convoy and we can use those against

• 24:37

the bandits in the next phase, which is actually more difficult. So. Yeah, we'll definitely

• 24:42

need them whenever they the bandits do come with reinforcements, they're probably going

• 24:48

to be bringing their best, so. Especially because we have more players now, so the difficulty

• 24:53

of the event will be more when there are more players. And of course, like all things in

• 24:57

Ashes, the more difficult the challenge, the better the rewards. And also, you know, our

• 25:03

clerics can have some time to heal up the the settlers and, you know, hopefully set

• 25:09

us up for success whenever the next round does come in. And how do we how do we leverage

• 25:15

the reward system? How are people, you know, getting calculated what rewards they should

• 25:19

get for events like this? We have kind of a number of metrics that we can use. I think

• 25:26

we're going to be doing a lot of testing to figure out what the best metrics are, because

• 25:29

there are some ups and downs using like the amount of damage you've done, you know, in

• 25:33

the in the raid and stuff like that. And we're also like more relaxed things like how much

• 25:38

time you spent participating in the event, whether that's doing damage or healing allies

• 25:42

and things like that as a as a percentage of the total time of the event. They all have

• 25:47

their drawbacks and benefits. Some are, you know, we got to be careful about. Yeah. But

• 25:52

yeah, we'll just count up the contribution, however we end up balancing that. And then

• 25:57

we have different tiers of rewards that are given to each individual player based off

• 26:01

of their contribution score in the event. As it works right now, it is just simply a

• 26:06

matter of how much time you've participated in the event as a percentage of the total

• 26:10

time of the event. Very nice. And so as that kind of as that winds down, people will be,

• 26:17

you know, granted a gold, silver, bronze tier kind of reward status, and that will be the

• 26:22

entitlement for the types of rewards they get from these events. And really, that's

• 26:26

just going to determine the reward table that they're going to get. And then each player

• 26:29

is going to roll their own reward table independently. Very nice. I hope I'm going to get rewarded

• 26:35

for all the healing I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you deserve it. Raid leader. Yep.

• 26:42

Our timer is up and Corvin, the crusher appears to be on the way. Oh, God, he's coming. All

• 26:50

right. We're going to need healing almost immediately. Oh, my God, there's a lot. I'm

• 26:57

going to try to sleep some of them. Oh, never mind. There's multiple balls of lightning.

• 27:03

See if I can line this up right. You can try and use the wraps as best I can. Man, this

• 27:16

is really great. I am on fire. We have them in a choke point right now. We definitely

• 27:20

want to keep them away. Oh, there's birds. We want to keep them away from the caravan

• 27:23

and in this choke point. I got him to trigger the trap over here. I'm hitting them with

• 27:27

a lot of A.O.E.s right now. And the only objective here, as you can see from the tracker, is

• 27:34

to kill Corvin. So until Corvin goes down. Yeah, I'm trying to prioritize their healing

• 27:40

and DPS so that we can have a better chance here. I think with the raid group of eight,

• 27:48

we seem to be set up for success here. Corvin, the crusher. I mean, Scott, would either of

• 27:55

you want to touch on the event difficulty tier and what we intend to do with that as

• 28:00

more players join the event? Well, as soon as people join in, I yeah, it just gets more

• 28:08

difficult. I don't know if you saw, but we had a toast saying that the event has progressed

• 28:18

from its original state as a group event to a raid level event. It was a veteran, veteran

• 28:25

level. And of course, that comes with more challenges, more optional objectives, but

• 28:30

also more rewards. So it's never it's never going to be like a bother to have other people

• 28:38

join you. It's it's all part of part of being in a like multiplayer environment is, you

• 28:45

know, the more friends join up with you, the better. Yeah, you know, I think it's cool

• 28:53

that you touched on the rewards because, yeah, the designers have have the ability, you know,

• 28:59

from a technical perspective to use the difficulty to your however they like in the event. They

• 29:03

can modify any aspect of the events difficulty or even, you know, the reward that you're

• 29:08

getting. They can query that in the reward table data. We're doing pretty good here.

• 29:13

This caravan hasn't really been taking much damage at all. Yeah, the tank was able to

• 29:18

intercept him at that choke point. So yeah, that seems to be working to this elite healer

• 29:24

is rough. Yeah, they should be very hard to kill. Some of the great shore swordsmen and

• 29:31

the archers are still alive. We can change that. We have the technology. There we go.

• 29:39

Oh, we did it. We win. Congratulations. The reward. Well, you know, there's also a grateful

• 29:48

settler here presenting us the reward. Maybe something to say. Let me talk to him. Greetings,

• 29:56

grateful settler. Praise Ariok. They might have killed us without your intervention.

• 30:03

Please help yourself. I will help myself. Thank you. What type of supplies are we talking

• 30:08

about? Oh, you're one of those heroes. Unbelievable. This is a difficult, difficult task. You know,

• 30:16

you just head over to Highwayman Hills and join the bandits. Even unbelievable claim.

• 30:22

Unbelievable. I am a hero in this. I'm a mayor of a local. No, my God. A shame it came to

• 30:29

violence. We are hopeful we could leave that behind on Sanctus. Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful

• 30:34

of that too. But you know, sometimes we can't just get what we hope for. So, whoa, we got

• 30:39

some wool. Yep. We got some wool. Okay. I got some wool. You're also granted on the

• 30:47

events completion. You're granted like a little stipend of golden experience just right away.

• 30:51

But items that can be looted off your body, they have to come from like a reward chest.

• 30:55

So every event will have its own reward cash at the end of it. You'll grab your materials

• 30:59

items from. And I actually got some ash and timber as my reward. Why'd you get Tim ash

• 31:05

and timber? Well, that rolled. I got that reward from my reward table. Maybe I participated

• 31:11

better than you. So I got a better resource. How dare you? I was out there doing a lot

• 31:16

of work. And it's got this. This NPC is also configured to actually interface with some

• 31:22

of the story art content to write if the story arcs were online. It's true. Yeah, I think

• 31:26

they it is online. Actually, it's just not active. Check it again. Oh, okay. Where am

• 31:32

I going? Talk to the guy again. I think you might have missed a dialogue option or it

• 31:35

didn't pop up. Okay. Okay. The top one. Who are these people? Why were they? Who are these

• 31:39

people? Let's see. They're desperate folks who prowl the hills. Captain Udoxia in Lion

• 31:47

Hold is looking into the matter. I should seek her out and find if there is a better

• 31:51

way I could help around here. You know what I will do. Okay, here we go. I see a lot of

• 32:02

different placeholder rewards. A bridge too far. Yeah, the rewards for the for a lot of

• 32:08

the quests are still not fully done yet. But the events do hook into all of our story

• 32:15

art content. So if there are story arcs online, we can like since our quests are nonlinear,

• 32:20

this can help you kind of into those quests. If they're online, this event can happen whether

• 32:25

or not the story is online. But if it is, you can pick up the like, leave in to that

• 32:31

quest from him. If you're not, you know, if you haven't been to Lion Hold in a while since

• 32:34

the story arc has started. Very cool. And so obviously, you know, people saw a little

• 32:40

bit during this event that the adaptive difficulty was predicated on the number of participants

• 32:46

that opt in to to to partake in this event, right? Correct. Yes. So as more players join,

• 32:56

the event does get more difficult with we went from the regular mobs to the elite mobs

• 33:02

in Corvin's Entourage. Some of them can be, you know, more, more enemies to fight. Some

• 33:09

can have completely different stages or mechanics, depending on which what the event actually

• 33:13

is and what your objectives are for that event. And these these events are based off of different

• 33:21

predicates within the world state. So, for example, this particular event was a caravan

• 33:24

that was moving throughout the world. And as you as we said in the beginning, it was

• 33:27

based off of the activity heat map of players within this area. But this type of event,

• 33:33

this caravan event that was transiting goods popped up because nearby nodes may have either

• 33:38

been advancing the relationship between each other or there might have been a trade caravan

• 33:43

that got kicked off in the past. And we're representing kind of that that theming within

• 33:49

the world by these event types. Correct. Yes. So events are predicated by things that players

• 33:54

are doing, whether that is node development, trade agreements between nodes, all of that,

• 34:00

like relationships between nodes. I mean, so it could be more than just that could be

• 34:04

war states or anything like that as well. So I noticed that even though we succeeded

• 34:10

in the event, we're still in our event raid group. Scott, what's the thought behind that?

• 34:13

Are we supposed to go and adventure with our new group right now? If we so desire, if we

• 34:18

so desire? Yeah, the event ending doesn't dissolve the open party for the event. The

• 34:23

open parties have some sort of default like party configurations that can't be changed.

• 34:29

So they'll be stuck with a group and stuff like that. But we do try to encourage people

• 34:33

to continue to stick together and play together. The game the game is hard. So it's good to

• 34:39

put it's good to play friends. Yeah, I just left the raid. I don't want to play with you.

• 34:45

He's going to join the bandits. I called it. Yes, I'm looking for the highway men who bandage

• 34:49

it. Very cool. Okay. And then obviously we saw during the event, there are obviously

• 34:55

multiple stages that exist. Each of those stages having unique mechanics associated

• 34:59

with them. There are a lot of different types of events. I mean that you and the narrative

• 35:04

team and Scott that you guys are working on creating each of those event types will have

• 35:08

different similar stages like we saw there was a trap stage here that we can set up.

• 35:13

Is it intended that these stages are going to provide players with kind of downtime to

• 35:17

recuperate and also perhaps set up and strategize how they want to address the upcoming challenge?

• 35:23

Well, I don't really know about you, but I'm my heart's beating right now. I feel like

• 35:28

we've been challenged and of course there's going to be moments where there are like less

• 35:36

less challenges which rely less on your class kit than usual. But I think that in general,

• 35:44

if you want to like really get down and understand the story and appreciate the world, then probably

• 35:52

you're going to want to focus more in the story arcs where you can take things at your

• 35:56

own pace. We have we have some events that do other things like there could be some that

• 36:01

are just puzzles. We have an event in here that is actually just like you can attend

• 36:07

a funeral for just an NPC that can pop up and there isn't actually any combat to do

• 36:12

in that one. Rewards are adequately scaled. There are events in here that are just kind

• 36:17

of for flavor and for fleshing out the world a little bit to that you can participate in

• 36:20

and learn more about. Yeah, I think there are going to be some moments where where you

• 36:24

might be like frustrated that an event is like obscuring something that you want to

• 36:28

get to like a NPC that you need to talk to for your quest or something. So then then

• 36:34

gathering people to help you is going to be really useful. Awesome. Very cool. And that

• 36:40

that event there at the last stage had kind of like a little mini boss dude. Is that kind

• 36:46

of a component of all events that you guys are intending to incorporate or just kind

• 36:50

of some events will have those mini bosses? Some will have them. There's going to be a

• 36:55

whole lot of these and they're going to be at different tiers of challenge and you know,

• 37:01

kind of, I guess, like power level tiers. You know, they're not all going to be, you

• 37:08

know, defeating the, you know, and all dragon being at the end. Some are just, you know,

• 37:15

about helping people. There's some are about just building up the world of Verra, which

• 37:21

is a very difficult and challenging place as people are trying to resettle it. There's

• 37:25

there's all kinds of tiers for different levels of heroism. I'm helping the small time people

• 37:29

to downing giant foes. And these are obviously a bit different than what people have seen

• 37:36

previously with Carfinn where we showed off kind of the story arc system that fundamentally

• 37:40

changes a particular location or area for an extended period of time that exists within

• 37:46

stages that are might be multi days in length. These are more bite sized, kind of digestible

• 37:52

end to end 20 minute gameplay, right? Right. Definitely shorter than a story arc, which

• 37:58

yeah, as you said, as you mentioned before, is meant to be taken kind of at a slower pace.

• 38:02

Can your individual path through the story arc is a little bit more measured, like you're

• 38:06

less reliant on like the pace of the actual story arc. It's more about your own personal

• 38:12

paces through the quests. And then as the story arc advances over time, like over the

• 38:17

course of days, then you can dive back into it and get more involved in it again. Very

• 38:23

cool. And then if there are people who might be problematic to a particular event, like

• 38:33

this Jindrak guy. Oh, OK. I think it's triggering again. Like this Jindrak guy, we could like,

• 38:40

you know, attack them or something. Oh, we could. Yes. If you were aligned with the bandits,

• 38:46

maybe. And there are some events that do have you pick sides in PvP. Yeah. You know, whenever

• 38:52

Steven joined this event, he had one option to just merge us into the event raid group.

• 38:56

This was a PvE event. But there are going to be events with sanctioned PvP where there

• 39:03

are multiple team options to join. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. OK, very cool. Well,

• 39:11

I'll let Jindrak live this time. Guys, that was a super exciting event showcase. I know

• 39:17

that the community loved to kind of see this stuff. Obviously, events are an integral component

• 39:21

of making the world feel kind of dynamic and representative of what is happening around

• 39:26

the area. It gives people insight into particular locations and the type of activities that

• 39:32

might be occurring. But it also gives really interesting ways for us as players to interact

• 39:36

with that environment and effect change as well and be rewarded for that activity. I

• 39:42

think it's super cool. You guys did a great job with standing up the event system and

• 39:46

populating the world with really compelling activities. So thank you for showing us a

• 39:50

little bit of the work you guys have been doing towards Alpha 2. I know that the community

• 39:54

loves it and we'll be back on stream to talk a little bit more about this. All right. Thanks

• 40:00

for having me, Stephen. Bye. Thanks, Stephen. Absolutely. Bye, everybody.

• 40:05

Whoops. Welcome back. Why'd you say whoops? Oh, my light went out. In the office, it went

• 40:18

out right at the end there. Oh, no. Hopefully the Internet's going to be OK. It's just light.

• 40:24

I will play the video in the background so you all can watch that. We do have some questions

• 40:29

from chat about some things. So one of the things was to kind of set expectations for

• 40:36

parties. We did talk about how when you disband a party or when you end it, you know, we do

• 40:44

encourage you to group up and stay together. But people are wondering if they have to like

• 40:49

fully reform their parties or what the plan is in regards to that.

• 40:53

Yeah. So there is an option, as we said at the end, to kind of stick around in that raid

• 40:58

and to go off and do some additional things with each other. Obviously, we want to encourage

• 41:02

players to kind of cooperate and work with one another. That is an MMO after all. And

• 41:07

that is the name of the game. But at the same time, if people want to convert back into

• 41:11

a party or if they want to move from that raid, they are more than welcome to do so.

• 41:15

Right. And then what happens if someone joins the event and then like goes MIA, goes to

• 41:22

get a coffee, goes to the bathroom, leaves? Does that still keep the difficulty?

• 41:29

Yeah. So there is a way that we kind of heat map player activity during the event to help

• 41:35

inform that difficulty. It's not just going to be based purely off of the number of participants

• 41:40

within the area or within the raid. That's something that is dynamic and scales accordingly.

• 41:46

But the idea here is that, you know, we can't necessarily predict the number of players

• 41:50

that are going to be participating in these types of events, of course, because not only

• 41:54

is it opt in, but it's also kind of situationally and locationally relevant to the player activity.

• 42:01

Now, those events kicked off based off of local player activity. As you saw here, we're

• 42:06

killing the bears, we're killing the spiders. That was one of the predicates that kind of

• 42:09

kicked this local event off. The event was then thematically relevant to kind of activities

• 42:14

that were happening around the zone. And that was like relationship between nodes that was

• 42:18

progressing that caused this theming to be about a caravan being assaulted by bandits

• 42:25

for supplies. And so it kind of gives you a touch point to the rest of the world and

• 42:29

what's happening there. But we want to scale that difficulty to a degree, right? And we're

• 42:35

not talking about like scaling up the players power or scaling down the power of the NPCs,

• 42:40

but rather how many additional spawners start to activate, what different types of NPCs

• 42:45

start to join? Are they going to be elites? Is there the boss? Right? Those types of those

• 42:49

types of things are scalable as part of the event system.

• 42:54

Cool, and then are you able to heal the caravan settlers and things like that? I know that

• 43:01

you were, but we want to clarify like that you do need to protect them to some extent.

• 43:08

Are there implications for if you don't like if a bunch of people die that you're supposed

• 43:12

to be guarding? Will you get less reward? What's the for sure there is the ability to

• 43:17

fail. I know that that is a strange concept for a lot of us nowadays playing more modern

• 43:23

games, but there is absolutely a way to fail. And some of those ways include how you're

• 43:30

going to expend resources, not just for your fellow players, but for some of the objectives

• 43:35

that might be present within the event as well. And those resources that mainly being

• 43:40

your mana in this circumstance with regards to healing those those NPCs is, I think, a

• 43:47

relevant and interesting component that makes it a little bit more dynamic.

• 43:50

All right, and then do the events have cooldowns or could players force the event to spawn

• 43:58

endlessly? Events absolutely do have cooldowns. They cannot be forced to spawn repeatedly

• 44:05

over and over again. Those cooldowns are not just something that's based on a timer. They're

• 44:10

also predicated on certain actions occurring within the world once more or at different

• 44:16

times. And so again, the most important thing about this system is that when we're talking

• 44:22

about being out in a hunting grounds or being out, you know, transiting across the world,

• 44:29

these events are constantly popping up around the zones, right? And they kind of follow

• 44:34

player activity and movement. And there's a whole host of different types of events

• 44:39

from a content standpoint that reflect to the state of the world. And so it's important

• 44:46

that like as players are doing these things, these are additional levels of experience

• 44:51

grants and reward tables that can be accessible based off of cooperation with other players

• 44:57

in the area. All right, and then the last one here is what

• 45:04

would have happened if the raid group failed the event? I know that you talked a little

• 45:08

bit about this before, but would something have happened if we wouldn't have saved?

• 45:14

Yeah, so so events that get kicked off. If you would not have saved everybody, if this

• 45:20

event would have failed and actually it failed many times in testing, but if this event would

• 45:27

have failed, it would have contributed to a world state tracker, right? And and events

• 45:32

kind of can roll. The event outcome can inform other events as predicates as well, right?

• 45:42

And when you get enough events that are being failed. When you get enough events that are

• 45:48

being failed, that can trigger a bigger event. And when a bigger event fails, that can trigger

• 45:54

potentially a story arc and that can trigger potentially atrophy events like there's it's

• 46:02

a cascading foundational system that serves to predicate how other instances of dynamic

• 46:12

reactive world. Activities respond to player choices, player efforts, player successes

• 46:21

and failures, right? What we're building is a very comprehensive, responsive world, and

• 46:26

I know a lot of times in different games you hear the buzzwords of like dynamic and responsive

• 46:30

and reactive and you know whatever, but we are building the mechanics to inform those

• 46:37

systems from a very scaling foundational perspective which can culminate into big. Server changing

• 46:47

things happening right and this is at the very ground level of that overarching system.

• 46:54

You guys saw a little bit of the story arc system with carfin and how it fundamentally

• 46:59

changed the visuals of that of that area. But what can help inform carfin story arc

• 47:06

kicking off is how these smaller feeding events what the outcome of those are right so so

• 47:13

that's that's how we get the world that feels. Respective of player action. Yeah, there's

• 47:20

things that happen that have a domino effect of other things happening and depending on

• 47:25

how that thing happened it may change and it doesn't always have to be the same things

• 47:30

that are always happening. This is why when we said that every server will kind of pretty

• 47:34

much be very very different from another server it would be very very unlikely that they will

• 47:40

be exactly the same and in the same state because you have to take very specific actions

• 47:46

at the same time to make those things line up that way. Of course the video that we have

• 47:53

will be up in 4k so if you want to see that you can head on over to our YouTube channel

• 47:57

after the stream. I'm going to stand up and move around so I can get my light. Yeah, because

• 48:01

the motion lights. Someone should someone at the office come wave around. It will not

• 48:10

pick me up even though I'm moving around. That's funny you don't move fast enough you're

• 48:14

like sloth mode. And of course we also have a forum event update feedback thread as well

• 48:21

so if you have any thoughts after watching this and of course after you're able to like

• 48:26

kind of move things around on the live stream or watch it either on Twitch or YouTube you

• 48:30

can feel free to toss your feedback our way. We of course will be compiling a report for

• 48:35

development in order to ensure that they get all the information from what you guys what

• 48:40

your thoughts are so share those with us. And with that we shall move over to studio

• 48:47

update. Studio update yes. It's funny actually I was watching in chat somebody said how can

• 48:57

I become a developer for this? Yeah, come work with us. That's a nice little segue.

• 49:06

Yeah studio update things are going great at the studio. We are continuing to grow.

• 49:11

We are ending our our milestone actually this week actually I think it ended the end of

• 49:17

last week. We are currently transitioning into our next milestone right now. It ends

• 49:21

the 29th today. 29th oh it ends today that's right. And next week we are having about 20

• 49:29

of our remote employees are flying in for our milestone seven preparation and kickoff

• 49:34

in San Diego and we're gonna have some fun events with the team doing some bowling nights

• 49:41

and some full day reviews of our milestone and play testing and it is an exciting time

• 49:49

here at the studio and I wanna take a moment to. I wanna take a moment to talk a little

• 49:59

bit about the state of our industry and you know be respective of the fact that you know

• 50:07

not everywhere in the gaming industry in the tech industry in general right now the economy

• 50:11

is obviously a point of concern. There's a lot of layoffs that have been happening and

• 50:16

and it is a it is a very unfortunate and terrible thing. Of course I made a little bit of a

• 50:21

statement on Twitter yesterday and on LinkedIn you know our hearts go out to those individuals

• 50:27

and and it is an it is an incredible experience to be a part of teams that create the magic

• 50:33

that games are because really they are magical. I mean games are games are a very important

• 50:40

part of our lives right. It is important to have a work life balance and part of of everyone

• 50:46

out there who are in this audience that that get to have downtime and experience games

• 50:51

with their friends and their families and and and and kind of de-stress with that. It

• 50:55

takes a lot to make those things and it takes a lot of effort and dedication and commitment

• 51:02

and when things outside of your control and outside of your power impact your ability

• 51:07

to do that it's obviously a moment of pause and reflection and Intrepid intends and strives

• 51:13

to be one of those places that takes that takes sustainable growth practices as part

• 51:22

of building up our company and our team in the efforts to deliver this product. Now of

• 51:28

course MMOs are the biggest game you can make. Our MMORPG is probably one of the more ambitious

• 51:36

ones and from the get-go we knew and you guys knew from a community perspective that this

• 51:42

was going to be a journey and it continues to be that but every time we onboard a new

• 51:47

person to this company to our team to our Intrepid family and I know that's a hot button

• 51:52

they should even use that word sometimes in a work setting but I that is the type of feeling

• 51:58

we we we try to achieve at Intrepid. Every time we onboard someone new we do so with

• 52:05

the conscious effort to to to know what the end goal is in our development journey and

• 52:13

to treat that team member that family member with the type of of respect for their work

• 52:21

and and participation in this project right and so if you know somebody that's been impacted

• 52:30

by these layoffs recently if if you guys are in the ecosphere of of Twitter and or LinkedIn

• 52:37

of these developers who are some of your favorite developers that have worked on projects in

• 52:40

the past and you've seen the the product of their toils then make sure to send them a

• 52:46

message and let them know that we exist that Ashes of Creation is a project and that we

• 52:51

have a lot of positions that are open and if they don't see a position that's open they

• 52:56

can go to Intrepid Studios.com to our careers page and they can submit their resume and

• 53:00

their portfolio and experience and we will spend the time and effort in order to evaluate

• 53:07

their potential on the team so you know that is that is something that I think is important

• 53:12

and it's a it's a rough time out there right now for sure and our hearts go out to the

• 53:16

people that are impacted by some of these layoffs but but things are looking good here

• 53:21

at Intrepid Studios and we continue to move forward and their next milestone is going

• 53:24

to be a big one and with that being said well I would yeah I think that I have some notes

• 53:33

here too from our HR team which I'm not going to share everything they gave me because some

• 53:36

of that is like private information for us but I think one of the cool things is I'm

• 53:40

a data junkie as someone who does a lot of marketing stuff we have an insanely great

• 53:48

attrition rate comparatively to the industry so I mean for us we're at like 3.4% people

• 53:54

are going to come and go they're going to have reasons why they want to maybe they're

• 53:56

going to get paid more in another company or they they want a different type of job

• 54:00

and we don't have that available for them although we do accommodate quite greatly for

• 54:04

people or they want to be somewhere else.

• 54:07

3.4% though that's not bad what's the industry average?

• 54:10

The software development or the the global average is 38.9% and the software development

• 54:20

specifically is 57.3% so we are we are extremely low because people really do enjoy working

• 54:28

here and I know it is cliche when it sounds cliche when you say family but Steven and

• 54:32

John really treat us all like family like there is love and care there that I have not

• 54:37

always had at other companies so thank you.

• 54:41

Well absolutely we we love you and we love our team and it is something special that

• 54:46

I think we built here at this company and it definitely feels like that.

• 54:51

I think it would be great for us to talk a little bit about a common discussion point

• 54:58

that obviously you and the community and we're going to do that before the art oh before

• 55:02

the art oh okay okay my bad I'm sorry we can do it no we can do it if you want okay okay

• 55:06

yeah do it now.

• 55:08

So wildin you guys.

• 55:10

As you guys know we have reserved our announcement for dates until we are certain that we can

• 55:20

hit them we've we've been burned in the past with that we took our licking so we learned

• 55:24

and no more date Steven until correct it's happening I've been a good boy I've been a

• 55:29

very good boy without having said any haven't said any dates and what I would like to do

• 55:35

is as I see often in the community with a lot of different conversations with content

• 55:43

creators you know when is Alpha 2 going to be is it this year is it next year is it you

• 55:48

know 2030 you know kind of wild speculation that I think I have attempted to address by

• 55:56

saying Alpha 2 is not years away but it's also not right around the corner and so as

• 56:03

we grow closer to Alpha 2 we will give a definitive date the next time you hear from us about

• 56:11

when Alpha 2 is going to be it's probably going to be delegated to a particular quarter

• 56:15

and then when we're probably a few months away we will have the date in mind but for

• 56:19

now I can definitively tell you that Alpha 2 is going to be and cue the video.

• 56:34

That wasn't too bad that's pretty good so guys we can say that from now on when people

• 56:54

talk to you about when Alpha 2 is going to be it is no longer a question of if but when

• 57:01

next year Alpha 2 will be rolled out for public testing we have a number of different testing

• 57:07

events that are going to be participating over the.

• 57:09

Can I make some clarifications for things?

• 57:11

Absolutely.

• 57:12

It includes some of that so the exact date as Stephen said will be provided in the future

• 57:17

and of course when we do provide that date we will also give you guys further information

• 57:22

in regards to testing schedule what's included in Alpha 2 because I know that that's where

• 57:26

this is going to go next and also the NDA spot testing that will be before Alpha 2 we

• 57:35

will have first one with our PI members then we'll have some with our Alpha 1 users and

• 57:41

then our Alpha 2 users and of course Alpha 2 will not be NDA'd but that spot testing

• 57:47

will be NDA'd so keep that in mind and then note that Alpha 2 is only accessible for players

• 57:53

who have Alpha 2 access so just because you had Alpha 1 access does not mean that you

• 57:57

will have Alpha 2 access so make sure that you do have Alpha 2 access in your inventory

• 58:02

it'll say Alpha 2 if you do but you will be able to partake in pre-tests because that's

• 58:08

technically still Alpha 1.

• 58:10

Yes, absolutely and guys I want to talk to you a little bit about setting expectations

• 58:15

right appropriately anytime you're delivering a software as big as even what Alpha 2 is

• 58:25

there's going to be bumps, there's going to be hiccups, there's going to be things that

• 58:28

we don't account for and that's just the nature of the beast part of that is many communities

• 58:36

don't have an opportunity to see those bumps and hiccups because projects keep things very

• 58:40

tight to the chest we have since the get-go decided not to take that approach and instead

• 58:46

take the good, bad, and ugly approach which is you guys get to see that stuff and so as

• 58:54

we're moving towards Alpha 2 in 2024 you can expect to see part of our development updates

• 59:00

we'll be showcasing of course continually these systems you know some of those systems

• 59:04

will be very big some of those systems will be smaller but our intent is to get feedback

• 59:08

on them and kind of get experiential feedback especially so that we can help inform the

• 59:13

revisions and the iterations that we do to them that's why we do these development updates

• 59:17

right it's not just Margaret and I love being here with you guys and being a part of this

• 59:22

process but we don't do it because we love it we do it because it is an integral component

• 59:27

of making a good product right and that is our philosophy.

• 59:32

So with that being said I can hopefully now put to rest some of the question marks that

• 59:39

arise out of the when is Alpha 2 going to be we definitively now.

• 59:43

I mean they're still going to ask.

• 59:44

I know I know of course now.

• 59:45

As soon as January 1st goes they're going to be like so what date is it?

• 59:49

We have moved the discussion out of the realm of years into the realm of months which month

• 59:54

is it going to be right?

• 59:57

So that is I think a positive outcome.

• 59:59

And like what Stephen said we will our next update will give you a quarter and then we

• 1:00:03

will provide dates after that so just keep that in mind there is going to be a progression

• 1:00:10

of that information.

• 1:00:11

Absolutely absolutely.

• 1:00:12

Yeah very cool what a time to be alive.

• 1:00:16

I know it has been it has been wild a wild time in general for all of us but yeah does

• 1:00:24

anything else on the studio update?

• 1:00:26

Yeah I think we got we caught everything so art stuff look at pretty art stuff let's do

• 1:00:31

it yeah let's do it let's look at art.

• 1:00:34

No I just got a message from our web team that the website is currently getting hit

• 1:00:38

hard oh no.

• 1:00:40

Great probably because everyone's like let's buy a package.

• 1:00:45

The packages are going to be available till January 17th so so it'll be okay.

• 1:00:51

I probably shouldn't have said that on the stream then it would just exacerbate the problem.

• 1:00:56

Or the the career page people might have been going to that too.

• 1:00:59

So first and foremost we've got the deep wood syrinx syrinx I think is what it's called

• 1:01:06

it's like an instrument of some sort which is really cool and that now has has its model

• 1:01:12

and you may have seen these little potion traps on the ground that were created.

• 1:01:19

I love seeing the work in progress images so I always like sharing that stuff with you

• 1:01:24

guys and so that's what.

• 1:01:27

And this is what you saw in the game yeah.

• 1:01:31

Very cool.

• 1:01:33

And then we've got the.

• 1:01:35

By the way notice the kind of styling of the magical fantasy the kind of magical realism

• 1:01:42

not so much too far on the steampunk side not too much magic tech side but you know

• 1:01:48

it's still keeping even doesn't like a fantasy.

• 1:01:51

You know it's not that I don't like it I think that there's a lot of really cool interesting

• 1:01:55

kind of steampunk iteration that's done in these games it's just I'm a I'm a high fantasy

• 1:02:01

guy.

• 1:02:02

Yeah we had some like designers who were trying to like plot out steampunk I was like no that's

• 1:02:08

not Ashes of Creation move on.

• 1:02:12

But next up we've got the Legionnaire outfit which now has a model as well.

• 1:02:18

I think it should rotate.

• 1:02:20

I believe I have a turntable for this as well.

• 1:02:25

Very different type of armor I know some people weren't sure how they felt about this set

• 1:02:30

but the lore for it is really cool and some of the other pieces that they have for this

• 1:02:34

set are coming along really well.

• 1:02:36

So I'm excited to share those.

• 1:02:40

Next up is we've been working out some options for Vec plate and this is kind of a little

• 1:02:45

preview of one of the directions.

• 1:02:48

Oh I love the Vec models and the plate looks so good.

• 1:02:53

Yeah I think Jan has been working on this and killing it.

• 1:03:00

Yeah that looks great and then we have the face masks the helmet looks the helmets.

• 1:03:07

We have the turntable for this people can kind of see how that looks.

• 1:03:12

And look you can see the model looks great.

• 1:03:15

So this is the female model and then I will also show you it on the male.

• 1:03:25

And remember guys as you guys are seeing these different armor sets you know the armors that

• 1:03:32

we work through of course gradually increase in tier right based off of kind of the level

• 1:03:38

that we're provisioning the armors for.

• 1:03:41

Now is this a cosmetic set or was this this is not armor.

• 1:03:44

No so this is in-game achievable.

• 1:03:48

And I believe that this armor judging off of its silhouette is probably going to be

• 1:03:53

about a tier two armor from a tier five system right.

• 1:03:57

So this would probably be something as a Vec that you would have access to between levels

• 1:04:02

like 15 to 25 ish roughly.

• 1:04:05

Yeah beyond knows he can DM me and I can update it but yeah very very cool.

• 1:04:12

And then of course we've got the silk fur dune hunter that Jinsey has made the model

• 1:04:17

for and it looks so cute.

• 1:04:19

I mean they just make like the concept art look exactly like the character.

• 1:04:24

It's wild to me how amazing they are.

• 1:04:28

Who else is excited to ride this like oh my gosh so cute.

• 1:04:36

And with that we're ready to head on over to our Q&A.

• 1:04:41

I'll play the video in the background just so you have something to watch whilst we answer

• 1:04:48

some of y'all's questions from the forums.

• 1:04:51

The first one here is from plastic lemons.

• 1:04:54

Don't eat those.

• 1:04:55

I asked about Mayor history.

• 1:04:58

I once tried to eat a plastic grape when I was a little kid.

• 1:05:02

It did not go well.

• 1:05:03

I did the same thing.

• 1:05:05

I didn't try to eat it though I just chewed on it.

• 1:05:07

Yeah well I couldn't eat it so I spit it out but yeah I was chewing on it.

• 1:05:11

I thought it was a real.

• 1:05:12

I used to love those little plastic grapes.

• 1:05:14

I would just grab them and chew on them.

• 1:05:16

Oh just like okay.

• 1:05:18

Interesting.

• 1:05:19

You learn something new every day.

• 1:05:23

See somebody just said lol same.

• 1:05:26

Really?

• 1:05:27

Yes thank you.

• 1:05:28

Thank you Rakers maker.

• 1:05:29

Oh my gosh.

• 1:05:30

Maybe you guys are teething or something.

• 1:05:31

You're like a little chew toy.

• 1:05:32

Somebody else said that explains a lot.

• 1:05:33

That's so good.

• 1:05:34

There's too much sharing.

• 1:05:35

Too much TMI.

• 1:05:36

We have Mayor history which is will players have a way to see who past mayors of their

• 1:05:51

node were like a little like a log.

• 1:05:54

That'd be cool.

• 1:05:55

Yeah absolutely yeah so something.

• 1:05:57

And all their actions.

• 1:05:59

Well maybe not all their actions but.

• 1:06:02

We can dream guys.

• 1:06:04

It is something that we do intend to provide obviously historical references within the

• 1:06:08

game of not just the mayors of nodes but also you know server first downs of certain bosses

• 1:06:16

and this first like guild achievements and guild hall ownership like we want to you know

• 1:06:22

the achievement system should record things of note so that people are able to etch their

• 1:06:31

name or their guild in the history in the in the in the history of the server and mayorship

• 1:06:37

would be one of those things.

• 1:06:39

Very cool.

• 1:06:43

It would be cool if mayors could like leave a little note and then all the new mayors

• 1:06:47

get to see all the past notes.

• 1:06:48

Margaret was here just like etched in the desk.

• 1:06:55

Some might be helpful some might not be.

• 1:06:57

It's like what's that game.

• 1:06:59

Anyways moving on as a from node about node government wants to know are there plans for

• 1:07:06

official game supported node positions other than the mayor like a stable master or a procurement

• 1:07:13

officer.

• 1:07:14

That word's hard to say.

• 1:07:16

Are there other node based positions basically.

• 1:07:20

Yes there are other node based positions.

• 1:07:23

Some of the most of them relate to social organizational structures like the temple

• 1:07:30

and the social organization building that the node might construct.

• 1:07:35

Those are ladder systems of achievement that players can work through on a seasonal basis

• 1:07:40

to achieve the highest level of that for the particular node and by doing so they will

• 1:07:44

then have titles bestowed upon them which grants certain types of powers and benefits.

• 1:07:49

Nice.

• 1:07:50

Speaking of which I'm going to forward to one of the questions here from Caddack in

• 1:07:53

regards to social organizations.

• 1:07:55

Will progression in social organizations be permanent or must it be maintained like PVP.

• 1:08:02

There will be a portion of your social progression that does remain static but then when you

• 1:08:09

move into a section of the ladder system that's more competitive that section of achievement

• 1:08:18

will be ticking and seasonal and you'll have to repeat efforts there.

• 1:08:22

So you can achieve a certain status rank that will be permanent unless you choose to leave

• 1:08:26

the system and then there will be a section that's ladder based.

• 1:08:31

And then the next one here is about music.

• 1:08:34

DougBug27 wants to know cities in MMORPGs tend to have iconic music to match the aesthetic

• 1:08:43

of locations.

• 1:08:45

How do you expect Ashes of Creation and Bear McCreary specifically to create music to fit

• 1:08:50

nodes when they will be changing all the time?

• 1:08:54

And easy answer, predicates.

• 1:08:57

Well yeah it's a great question.

• 1:09:00

So Cat and Bear obviously we have a great process by which there are different levels

• 1:09:11

of associated soundtracks based off of defining features in the game.

• 1:09:18

So if we're talking about nodes then we're talking about what's the cultural representation

• 1:09:21

of that node.

• 1:09:23

Soundtracks and theming music will then be accompanied based off of the culture that

• 1:09:26

the node expresses.

• 1:09:28

If we're talking about biomes and we're talking about POIs, each of those will have distinctive

• 1:09:32

themes that are associated with them.

• 1:09:34

So when you're out in the wilderness or you're out at a specific POI, those will have soundtracks

• 1:09:38

that will play as well.

• 1:09:40

Each of those systems will encompass a layered effect that can reflect the stage of certain

• 1:09:48

types of events within an area.

• 1:09:50

So for example the POI that is Carfin, that will have a general theme for Carfin that

• 1:09:56

will play as you move into the area.

• 1:09:58

But depending on the effects of a particular story arc, we may weave in a layer of the

• 1:10:06

soundtrack that reflects perhaps the voice of the raid boss when she's present.

• 1:10:12

And if she's not that layer won't be weaved in.

• 1:10:15

So those soundtracks are constructed in such a way obviously where you can get a lot of

• 1:10:19

usage out of them and there are components and themings of those that can weave together

• 1:10:24

and layer together and it's intended to be something that not just as pleasant but informative

• 1:10:29

of the world as well.

• 1:10:31

And different states right?

• 1:10:32

Like if you're in combat.

• 1:10:33

Yes, correct.

• 1:10:34

There's combat.

• 1:10:35

Absolutely.

• 1:10:36

There's combat states as well.

• 1:10:39

Yes.

• 1:10:40

Speaking of music, our next question is from Song Rune and it's about bards.

• 1:10:46

What equipment slot does a bard's instrument take up?

• 1:10:51

It takes up the instrument slot.

• 1:10:54

Yes.

• 1:10:55

So there will be an instrument slot that can be available as well and the bard can equip

• 1:11:02

something there.

• 1:11:03

But that is obviously subject to change.

• 1:11:04

It is something that has been of heavy discussion within the combat team and the player character

• 1:11:09

team and how we want to facilitate instrumentation.

• 1:11:13

And it's something that we haven't yet really delved into from development perspective.

• 1:11:16

It's a little bit later on our prioritization list.

• 1:11:20

But the intent is that there would be an instrument slot.

• 1:11:22

All right.

• 1:11:24

And Killjoy from the forum wants to know about node taxes.

• 1:11:27

Since taxes are set by the mayor, is there going to be a way to see the tax rates in

• 1:11:33

different nodes from like a world map or something like that?

• 1:11:36

So you can decide like, hmm, where should I take my strawberries today?

• 1:11:40

Yes, absolutely.

• 1:11:41

Yes.

• 1:11:42

If you want to take your strawberry somewhere where the man isn't trying to pinch every

• 1:11:46

dime out of you, you can go into your world map and you can hover state over certain

• 1:11:50

nodes and you'll be presented with some basic information of which of course, taxation will

• 1:11:55

be a component.

• 1:11:57

And then as you arrive in that node, you will also have additional UI interface that can

• 1:12:02

present you with more granular data such as active items on the warehouse and active items

• 1:12:09

on the auction house in that location and different types of services presented by the

• 1:12:14

service buildings.

• 1:12:15

All right.

• 1:12:16

And then we've got from Grand Serpent about active blocking.

• 1:12:22

Has the team considered grapples or guard breaks to go along with the potential active

• 1:12:28

blocking?

• 1:12:29

So kind of like what the player is looking for and wondering is if there will be ways

• 1:12:33

to interrupt or cancel another player's active blocking.

• 1:12:36

So I'm blocking you.

• 1:12:37

Yeah.

• 1:12:38

For sure.

• 1:12:40

There is intended to be an interaction between different types of reactive and predictive

• 1:12:47

skill sets of which if a player is in a state such as an active block or an active tumble

• 1:12:53

state, there will likely be some types of abilities that interact with reacting to those

• 1:12:59

types of states and will either overcome, surpass or cancel out those states, particularly

• 1:13:05

as it relates to not just active blocking, but also potentially passive blocking as well.

• 1:13:09

And that would be something probably related to physical penetration values as a stat or

• 1:13:17

even CC breaks that could be relevant as well for those types of things.

• 1:13:21

I think that's on the radar for the combat team, but it's something they haven't or they

• 1:13:25

actually are, I think, exploring.

• 1:13:29

Exploring active blocking, right?

• 1:13:30

Yeah, I know.

• 1:13:31

You're not sure if the final answer is that we will have active blocking or not.

• 1:13:34

Well, I just had a discussion with the combat team last week with Trad and with Brian about

• 1:13:41

how we're going to implement the active blocking into the Alpha 2 kits.

• 1:13:47

And that is something we are moving forward with right now.

• 1:13:50

That's going to be tested with a stamina based system, which is universal energy, of course,

• 1:13:53

across all the different classes.

• 1:13:56

And yeah, that'll be something we showcase in a future live stream, I think.

• 1:14:00

Right now it's very much in development.

• 1:14:02

So stay tuned, everybody, in regards to that.

• 1:14:04

I know that that's a hot, like, I was like, we also probably should address active blocking

• 1:14:09

as a whole, because I know last time we talked about this, we were like, we're exploring

• 1:14:13

it.

• 1:14:14

Yes.

• 1:14:15

And of course, we are not only exploring it now, we are actually actively developing

• 1:14:19

for it and we'll be testing with it, I believe, this sprint.

• 1:14:21

And things may change from Alpha 2.

• 1:14:23

I mean, that's why we want you guys to get your hands on it, test stuff, give us your

• 1:14:26

feedback.

• 1:14:28

And we'll be looking at data for that as well.

• 1:14:30

Our next question here is from Go, asking about world map information.

• 1:14:36

Will players be able to view their server's current VASL node networks on a world map

• 1:14:42

through a general filter, a special node building or other means?

• 1:14:46

Like, can they filter and find things?

• 1:14:48

Like if I'm looking for a specific building, can I figure out which node has that?

• 1:14:52

So I know where to go.

• 1:14:53

Yeah.

• 1:14:54

The only real question there is kind of how that how the user collects that information,

• 1:14:59

whether or not it's readily presented to the player just by being a player in the world,

• 1:15:05

or if they have to travel to locations and update that locations.

• 1:15:07

In the past, we talked about having a library that was capable of facilitating players exchanging

• 1:15:12

information for map data like that.

• 1:15:15

But we've moved a little bit more in a direction of just presenting that information upfront

• 1:15:18

to the player because travel is such a meaningful portion of the game and we don't have fast

• 1:15:23

travel.

• 1:15:25

So I think that for Alpha 2, what's planned is that we're going to be showcasing kind

• 1:15:30

of the intricate details of services offered at these node locations from just a UI presentation

• 1:15:37

standpoint within the map.

• 1:15:40

And that's going to service players being able to kind of strategize about their about

• 1:15:45

their travels.

• 1:15:46

All right.

• 1:15:48

And then Imoxsator wants to know about gear bonuses.

• 1:15:52

Will there be equipment gear bonuses for either single pieces or entire gear sets that offer

• 1:15:58

unique abilities that could change how a class is played?

• 1:16:03

And I think there's like two part from our end.

• 1:16:08

So I guess the fundamental of that question is, are there certain types of bonuses that

• 1:16:13

could impact the way you play your class?

• 1:16:16

I think the answer to that is yes.

• 1:16:19

Because anybody can wear any armor.

• 1:16:22

Correct.

• 1:16:23

Yes.

• 1:16:24

But at the fundamental is like if I were to get a set bonus that gave me a 10 percent

• 1:16:31

crit modifier on my waterfall stat and now I'm like, you know, critting often with my

• 1:16:36

weapon attacks or with my abilities, like I might lean in more towards being a crit heavy

• 1:16:41

focused class because of that particular bonus.

• 1:16:45

Whereas what I think what they're asking for is, am I going to get a item that gives me

• 1:16:51

like a fundamental new ability chain rather than augmenting my existing ability sets?

• 1:16:58

Right.

• 1:16:59

And I don't think the intent is to provide something new from an ability perspective

• 1:17:03

with majority of our set bonuses.

• 1:17:05

Right.

• 1:17:06

The intent is that we are augmenting existing waterfall stats with set bonuses and there

• 1:17:11

are going to be active skills that do get associated with certain types of pieces of

• 1:17:16

armor and or weapons.

• 1:17:18

Those will be much on the higher end if they're an active ability that comes with those things.

• 1:17:23

But I still don't think that the intended impact of those types of abilities is for

• 1:17:27

us to radically redefine the way a particular archetype might play.

• 1:17:34

Those determinations are made within the archetype kit and within the secondary archetype kit

• 1:17:39

as well.

• 1:17:40

All right.

• 1:17:42

And then Lashing wants to know about experience.

• 1:17:44

Apologies real quick.

• 1:17:46

One person asked, what is a waterfall stat?

• 1:17:48

A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute, right?

• 1:17:51

So if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate,

• 1:17:57

that would be considered a waterfall stat, the critical rate.

• 1:18:00

Yeah, that terminology.

• 1:18:01

I'm sorry.

• 1:18:02

Usually I'm pretty good about catching that.

• 1:18:06

The next question is about experience debt from lashing.

• 1:18:09

Does experience debt at max level interact with rested experience?

• 1:18:14

So let's say I have experienced at max level.

• 1:18:16

Will I be able to use rest experience to gain that experience back?

• 1:18:21

Yes.

• 1:18:22

Yeah.

• 1:18:23

Rested experience is a modifier that occurs when you first receive the experience.

• 1:18:27

And then after that modifier happens, where that experience goes to buy down the debt

• 1:18:32

is what happens.

• 1:18:33

So if you have rested experience and you have experienced debt and you go out to collect

• 1:18:36

experience, you will be working that debt off faster because of the rested experience.

• 1:18:41

All right.

• 1:18:42

Cool, cool.

• 1:18:43

And with that, we have answered the questions from the forums.

• 1:18:46

Thank you all for submitting questions.

• 1:18:49

Every development update, we put out a new questions forum post.

• 1:18:53

So if you would like to get yours chosen, we pick 10 at random.

• 1:18:58

So make sure that you get your questions in and only ask one question.

• 1:19:03

Follow the rules.

• 1:19:05

And we will be selecting those for the next time.

• 1:19:09

But of course, as we wrap up today's, I can't believe if I feel like we've done so many

• 1:19:13

really long ones, that this feels very weird to be ending.

• 1:19:19

This was a this was a breathing stream.

• 1:19:22

And then next stream is going to be an exhale stream.

• 1:19:26

Yeah, I'm like, what is our next one?

• 1:19:31

Just kidding.

• 1:19:35

We do tease stuff on our social and things like that.

• 1:19:37

So if you want to know in advance, sometimes we do share that information earlier or on

• 1:19:42

our Discord and forums and things like that.

• 1:19:43

So definitely follow us in all the places where ashes of creation were super easy to

• 1:19:47

find our wonderful Peter, who is our social media manager does an amazing job keeping

• 1:19:52

that filled with content that you guys can all consume and interacting with you all.

• 1:19:57

So please, please go check those things out.

• 1:19:58

And of course, we're going to upload the full development update video tomorrow pending

• 1:20:03

the internet cooperates with us.

• 1:20:05

And of course, the 4k video for the gameplay segment will be out today.

• 1:20:09

And you can find those over on our YouTube channel.

• 1:20:11

And of course, on our next development update, if you want to be spotlighted for a comment,

• 1:20:15

make sure that you leave a comment and subscribe to our channel.

• 1:20:20

That way we can select you.

• 1:20:22

Oh, little little hint there.

• 1:20:25

Sorry, they said give hint.

• 1:20:29

There's your hint.

• 1:20:31

And of course, please head on over to our forums forums.

• 1:20:33

Ashes of creation.com.

• 1:20:35

We have a whole bunch of feedback requests over there to development updates that will

• 1:20:39

be our dev discussions that are going to be there for you to fill out as well as the events

• 1:20:44

update as well.

• 1:20:45

So event update forum thread, give us your feedback feedback.

• 1:20:50

The hint is that it's in the riverlands.

• 1:20:52

No, I'm kidding.

• 1:20:55

Too good.

• 1:20:56

I love it.

• 1:20:59

And then we also have the unseen order cosmetics that will be ending on July or January, January

• 1:21:04

17 2024 at 11am Pacific.

• 1:21:07

There's an FAQ with all the details of that.

• 1:21:09

And of course, as we noted here, alpha two is coming in 2024.

• 1:21:14

We are excited to have you all join us next year and is going to be very fun.

• 1:21:18

Our development team has been kicking butt and working hard and we are continuing to

• 1:21:23

do so.

• 1:21:24

And it is very exciting.

• 1:21:26

Of course, thank you so much for tuning in today.

• 1:21:29

We hope that you will come watch our next development update.

• 1:21:31

And thank you to Clayton, I mean, Scott, and all of the developers who have helped with

• 1:21:36

the events, event, event stream, and just Ashes of creation as a whole.

• 1:21:41

And of course, Steven for your time.

• 1:21:43

And we will see you all next month.

• 1:21:46

Bye everyone.

• 1:21:47

Bye.

• 1:21:48

Bye.