Talk:2021-08-27 Livestream

This transcript is auto generated and has not yet been reviewed and formatted. Please help us format raw transcripts.

Transcription brute

• 0:04

[Music]

• 0:20

hello glorious Ashes of Creation community welcome to our august development update we hope that you have

• 0:26

been having a wonderful month i still can't believe it's august i keep forgetting oh yeah we just had our awful

• 0:32

one stuff it's just madness how are you doing steven

• 0:37

i am a bit mad at my recording this morning i'm sorry that's totally my

• 0:42

fault that we were late i wanted to of course record something um and when i

• 0:48

jumped in my recording failed to record four different times and i was like oh i mean

• 0:55

each time it was successively like more angry god until finally it worked on like the

• 1:01

fifth try and i just had to calm and collect myself and just like goose frog you know like just let it go

• 1:09

so you can you can try to hear it in his voice when you when the video comes out um but this is why i remind you a

• 1:16

million times before oh i tried i tried last night and i tried to fit it i tried

• 1:21

to fit it in and uh then this i was waiting on something else this morning and then something broke and so i

• 1:27

couldn't record what i wanted to record uh in the dev branch i was at like seven in the morning in

• 1:33

the engineering channel i'm like this is broken and this is broken like how did this go over one night right i know

• 1:39

everyone knows just so many challenges um but of course uh thank you all for

• 1:45

hanging out with us um we hope that you enjoy the fan art and actually we have a little bit of the fan art playing in the bottom here but if you join us early in

• 1:51

the stream uh we usually always have that playing um just so if we people can see it

• 1:56

uh well i'll get right into it of course i'm margaret crone i'm our community marketing lead here at Ashes of Creation

• 2:02

and with me as always is stephen sharif our creative director um today we we are going to be going

• 2:07

over some of our reminders we have a studio update design update environment art update and character

• 2:13

update as per usual we like to show everything off from all of our teams and we will do a little q a as well um so

• 2:20

thank you guys for putting in your questions in advance we always enjoy that and if your question doesn't get

• 2:26

answered here our community team is amazing and uh actually we have wagner who's a new community member um a

• 2:32

community manager on our team along with lieutenant toast we'll be answering your questions over there on the forums as

• 2:39

well so even if it's not answered here you probably might see the answer over there because a lot of the questions are repeat questions usually um i i see a

• 2:47

lot of people by the way asking if we're in the studio yet we are primarily in the studio but from a recording

• 2:54

standpoint we don't yet have our recording room um set up which we'll talk a little bit

• 3:00

about that in the studio update but yeah our conference rooms aren't completely ready to rock and roll yet so uh once

• 3:06

those are good to go i will be reusing and repurposing one or like multi-using it for live stream stuff and

• 3:13

we actually just hired on a video editor as well who will be assisting with that stuff um he's awesome as well

• 3:21

i say i see z says we need the fan art wall oh we do we definitely are planning on

• 3:27

having one in the community area so don't worry um or maybe we'll put it in the like

• 3:33

the game room area so people can see it when they walk or in that area cool yeah so we'll figure it out but i mean

• 3:39

you guys have sent us so much fan art we probably will have multiple walls with fan art we'll have the wall of fame and

• 3:45

the wall of shame [Laughter] we have talked about a wall of shame we

• 3:50

get some like crazy messages sometimes too um to say the least but i'll get right into

• 3:57

the reminders um first i wanted to talk a little bit about web updates if you didn't notice we did have down time last month uh this

Intro & Reminders

• 4:04

allowed us to put in paypal we did a couple bug fixes as well but primarily uh paypal was the main thing that we

• 4:09

were fixing as a payment processor we know there's a couple different issues in regards to that as well we're working

• 4:15

to resolve those and on top of that we have web design for our support section of our site that's going to kind of

• 4:22

incorporate matching it to the rest of our website if you haven't noticed that hasn't really transitioned over as well

• 4:28

as the forums but we're going to start with the the support because forums requires a lot more back-end stuff to to

• 4:34

happen beyond that we're also doing back and work that touches accounts and our sso

• 4:40

this is going to help us provide more options for 2fa account security and also providing better login integration

• 4:46

solutions cross-platform so that means you know you'll be able to log in and um it'll work with our

• 4:53

from web which includes forms and support and then the launcher in the future as well as our phone app in the

• 4:59

future as well so kind of like integrating all of those things so you have like one profile that attaches to all of those right now you probably

• 5:05

notice you have to like log in and then you log into forums and you log into the support separately

• 5:10

it'll all be like one conglomerate thing so that is my goal eventually it just takes a lot of back end for us to do and

• 5:16

if you hear my cats yelling in the background i apologize um

• 5:21

yeah they're like so one of them chucks the mouse in the air and then the other one goes and chases it and then the

• 5:26

other one checks it it's the beauty of having two cats is they will play with each other but yeah are these living mice or toy

• 5:33

mice toy toy oh okay got it they have like this little worm thing that they check

• 5:38

around too i don't know um but yeah so i think that those are kind of the main things uh and this will

• 5:44

also allow us to provide you better user messaging in regards to like anytime an

• 5:49

account a change is made on your account as well so like if a password is updated or things like that um we know that some

• 5:55

of that stuff is not completely in the right state uh so we want to we want to

• 6:01

bring it all up to date i know not not fun stuff so we'll move into more fun stuff um we've got our alpha one

• 6:09

uh this one does not include our alpha one stuff uh but our monthly cosmetic swap over is going to be happening on

• 6:15

september 1st 2021 and which is the series of the black root so if you would

• 6:20

like these make sure you snag them up before our next set is uh released

• 6:26

we've got our uh dub discussion that we put out this month which was what are some of the key

• 6:32

elements you should be introduced to as a new player and how much hand-holding do you generally like to see in-game

• 6:41

i'm sorry they're like being really loud what is this mouse what is this mechanical toy mouse it's not a

• 6:47

mechanical toy it's just one of those little tiny like toys they're just going crazy

• 6:55

i'm sorry um it's distracting but we really do want to know what your opinions are on new

• 7:01

player experience obviously that's the most important thing i know there's some people in our community who have said this is going to be the first mmorpg

• 7:07

that they've ever played and um you know that is amazing for us to be part of

• 7:13

that experience for you i remember my first mmo i don't know if steven remembers his but it's definitely i

• 7:18

remember yeah like i we really do want to make sure that we're making the experience great for you and also

• 7:25

for everybody so if you have um opinions please share those uh i believe the community team is going to be making a

• 7:31

report here shortly uh so make sure you get those questions or those answers and i remember my first death in an mmo

• 7:37

actually it was uh it was never winter nights on aol and i was i had just gotten a quest to go like

• 7:44

seek out some uh dragon egg or something and then i walked into this room and boom the

• 7:50

combat started and a poison cloud got cast on me which was like a ninth level spell or something from this dracolich

• 7:57

and i was like a level three rogue and uh it killed me instantly and i was just like oh that's unfortunate

• 8:05

i didn't even know you could die because i was like seven years old i could definitely see that uh and then

• 8:12

you're like now what do i do yeah pretty much um and of course next month for um our

• 8:20

september dub discussion we're gonna be asking you about the much anticipated character creation so we would love love

• 8:27

love you to get your your thoughts in on that we know that a lot of people have opinions so if you have opinions

• 8:34

send them over to our way in regards to our guild discussion we had a question for you which is what

• 8:40

characteristics make an ideal member for your guild how do you set and communicate those expectations and keep

• 8:46

track of a member's performance against them now this will help us a ton in regards to some of the systems we're

• 8:52

building for guilds so um definitely go over there toss your answers in because that is going to assist us in making

• 8:58

that and to tie that in we have app integration stuff that we're going to be talking about next month um

• 9:05

so we'd love for you to give us your feedback beyond that

• 9:11

um we know that people have been asking about the content creator program um

• 9:17

remember that we are still hiring for a position we had so many people interested in uh wanting to be part of this program

• 9:24

we want as many people to be in this program as possible uh but what that means is that we need more we need

• 9:30

somebody to help manage the program if it was a couple hundred people i think i could manage it on top of my other stuff

• 9:35

but it is a couple plus thousands of people so um we do want you guys all to be part of our our

• 9:41

journey here and to you know help build our community and help build your communities and

• 9:47

our goal is to create a content creator program that is like nothing else that you have experienced at any other studio

• 9:53

it's really going to be something where we help build a community together not only yours but ours as a whole

• 9:59

um beyond that once we do hire on a person uh we are in our second round of interviews in regards to that uh we have

• 10:06

a couple candidates who look promising so we'll see what happens in regards to those and we'll be sending them over to

• 10:11

stephen i think a couple are already um and once we do hire on that staff member

• 10:16

not only are we going to have a content creator program but we are building out a content creator training academy where

• 10:21

uh people can kind of go into that first to kind of train you to get up to a speed where we think that you should be

• 10:28

if you're if you're not quite at the point where we would want to give you an invite to the content creator program um

• 10:34

and of course there will be some people who just don't get into the program but we'll always email you and let you know

• 10:39

um you know what you can do to improve yeah it's usually people who have no content

• 10:45

like they literally have no content on their website like if you apply and you have no youtube

• 10:50

content or no twitch content that's hard for us to look at your content and tell if you're you know

• 10:57

streaming regularly or if you're making content regularly or like i have like your content what if it's like myspace

• 11:03

content or something i mean you can be a content creator i mean look at we have some people who make comics

• 11:09

and stuff like that that's still content creation to some extent right i think it just depends on the consistency of your

• 11:15

content and like the quality is more so you know the two the two things we're looking at we're

• 11:20

not looking at following and things like that that's not i know people have asked like how many followers do i need that's

• 11:26

not what we're looking for we want we want we want quality and consistency

• 11:32

all right with that i'm going to toss it over to steven to talk a little bit about stuff

Studio Update

• 11:40

studio updates absolutely so i think we have

• 11:46

about what 70 of our team back into the studio right now

• 11:54

um so things are going very well on that front i gotta give a huge shout out because oftentimes in a development

• 12:01

scene you don't hear about the it guys or the system administrator

• 12:09

and we have a very awesome uh sis admin a gentleman by the

• 12:15

name of jason zimmerman who has been doing a lot of work helping get everybody back into the studio and he

• 12:21

has been shouldering a lot of that responsibility himself and he's done an amazing job so

• 12:27

zim if you're watching the community sends you hearts and love you are put a lot of hearts in chat for him a lot a

• 12:34

lot of hearts and pogs for jason for chase or as we call him zim um so things are going really well on

• 12:40

that front um additionally we've had some great hires over the past like

• 12:46

month i think we've had uh six or seven just this last 30 days

• 12:52

which uh these very talented individuals who are joining the team you'll probably see

• 12:58

more of as we you know get into the dev diaries again and and do future streams

• 13:03

and whatnot but very excited for the talent uh that is joining the intrepid family um it's exciting to see obviously

• 13:11

growth uh but it's it's also very exciting just to see the the sheer talent amongst the pool of candidates

• 13:16

that we are now getting um as i think has been aided by in part you guys out

• 13:22

in the community helping to spread awareness for the studio and for the project and for um helping to kind of

• 13:28

retweet or you know share our uh job postings that we have available we still have

• 13:35

many more positions to fill uh obviously while the the team size is large now we

• 13:41

are going to be getting ever so larger and we have space to grow now that we're in our new studio um still waiting on um

• 13:48

some of the ancillary furniture our conference room furnitures our cafeteria furniture um a lot of the seating uh

• 13:56

kind of lounge area stuff once that stuff gets in you guys margaret is like literally foaming at

• 14:02

the mouth to record footage inside the studio i just wanted to do like a little water cooler like vibe i was gonna do

• 14:10

kind of like an instagram story snapchat thing that's like we ask a different developer every day like a question and

• 14:16

it doesn't always have to be like development oriented but kind of like behind the scenes getting to know the devs um steven's like no margaret not

• 14:23

yet not yet which is funny it's usually the other way around let's make sure everything is is tip top

• 14:30

and and in place prior to doing any sneak peeks in the studio but yes no

• 14:35

there's a lot of great a lot of great content that's planned you guys are going to enjoy getting to meet the team again you know

• 14:42

obviously there's still some concern with regards to to covet and this delta variant stuff and kind of the

• 14:48

you know the issues we've been having here in the states um hopefully that that uh doesn't continue to get worse

• 14:55

but we're keeping an eye on it and obviously our first priority is safety of our team um but with that being said

• 15:01

um we are super excited to to get the videos rolling again and and and move from out of this at home a stream

• 15:08

location to the in the office because that's going to be fun again as well

• 15:14

we're like building out um now that we have our video our new video editor um him and i are kind of

• 15:20

working out the news like in studio what that's going to look like and what kind of equipment we're

• 15:27

going to have so when we do come back it's going to be a much higher quality visual for you all um because some

• 15:33

people were like i actually think this is higher quality from home which makes sense to some extent because we were kind of using like a webcam from

• 15:40

the office but we're gonna have like proper cameras and stuff uh so we'll be excited we'll be setting up some cool

• 15:46

exciting stuff super exciting by the way you know what somebody reminded me of the other day um

• 15:52

and i don't know if i mentioned it to you but like do you know we're only like two months away from Extra Life again i

• 15:57

know enough yeah oh yeah i know i'm planning for it i alright you better get those vocal

• 16:02

cords ready are we doing some disney songs again oh the disney's like oh i was so nervous like my heart was gonna

• 16:09

be so great jump out of my chest i need to practice if we're gonna do that again oh yes we need it we need to start doing

• 16:15

we should practice i know we need to practice a duet that's what we need to do tell us community

• 16:21

what disney song would you want oh yeah we should do something like we should do some yeah some like pre-engagements and

• 16:26

see what like the desires are on the community side for us maybe we'll have uh lieutenant toast and vaknar put together

• 16:33

some uh some questions like that previous for you guys yeah

• 16:38

yes um so that's all that's all exciting i'm super excited for that we have

• 16:44

gloria's gourd coming up too because october is coming oh halloween one of my favorite uh uh

• 16:51

uh holidays halloween i love it i can't i can't wait to see the pumpkins again and all the jack-o'-lanterns the

• 16:57

community's crazy y'all create some amazing stuff yes

• 17:03

so that's all going good hiring is going well um uh so we have our huge um kind

• 17:09

of uh retrospective that we've been doing since august 15th

• 17:15

and now design is moving off to um documentation and pitch phase for some

• 17:20

of the changes on on on some of the systems that we represented in alpha one and some of the things that we

• 17:26

want to change going forward engineering is looking at well i guess we can get into those when we get into the sections

• 17:31

but anyways um we're going through retrospective at the studio it's been very very good to to obviously have all

• 17:37

of our team members go through the feedback and the forum commentary the reddit posts all of your social media

• 17:42

commentary uh which community has done an amazing job summarizing that into a report uh that is just

• 17:49

multi i was going to say multiple reports that are uh very in-depth and in detail and it's a huge help so big props

• 17:56

that community team not just during the live ops service of actual alpha one but um also uh in the post alpha one uh

• 18:04

duties that you guys have been fulfilling a really amazing job um sarah margaret

• 18:09

um and uh cody yeah adam um adam exactly peter yeah

• 18:15

favorite so you got it thank you once you start naming one you got to name them all right yeah they they all

• 18:21

did an amazing job putting together uh the reporting uh in regards to their fields and um we didn't we tried to go

• 18:28

as quickly as we could not as quickly as we could but be as thorough and get you guys data as quickly as possible and

• 18:35

then on top of that we are doing some sub city area reports uh pending what development is looking for so if design

• 18:41

needs reports on something a little bit more in depth we are going to do we are going to be doing those um production's

• 18:47

going to be sending that that list to us soon um but and if if they want feedback on

• 18:53

something that you guys didn't really talk about we may put out some little mini dev discussions uh just to the

• 18:59

alpha one testers in regards to that or maybe just broad we could do them broader as well maybe uh we'll just

• 19:05

discuss that because i think it will depend on if it's like something that's experienced versus something that could

• 19:11

be visually um feedback does that make sense yeah like if you were watching something and being

• 19:17

able to get feedback uh versus like actually the feel of something yeah for sure lots of reporting going on

• 19:24

and um we'll talk a little bit more and i guess we can kind of move into design do you want to play the video first or

Design/Engineering Update

• 19:30

do you want to talk a little bit about something sure yeah we can play the video first this is a super short video

• 19:36

i had i wanted to do something else but there was a little bit of a bug in the development uh build which is fine so

• 19:45

yeah there's a combat bug and there's like a zoom issue and it's okay it'll

• 19:50

get fixed um but like one day i know it's unfortunate but uh this i i

• 19:58

so last month i gave a description of what i felt was a really accurate

• 20:03

description of the terror bird and someone did clip it for me so thank you

• 20:09

it was so funny i was i laughed out loud it was great yes so i wanted to actually

• 20:15

uh just kind of show you the terror bird in the game and also you know show you i

• 20:20

don't know if you guys remember the thundering bolt beast and show you some the new flower monsters and some of the

• 20:27

vfx changes that we're doing based on feedback from the alpha one so um it's just a quick little five

• 20:33

minute video um but of course i know you guys enjoy that stuff so yeah we can start with that and

• 20:39

then we can go into design after all right i'm just remembering when i designed the thundering vault beast steven's like margaret

• 20:45

what are you doing i was like oh my gosh that tail margaret like you're gonna give one of the animators a heart attack how many joints are needed for each of

• 20:51

those little wings this is when we just this is one we transitioned over to like we have to use

• 20:56

the base models for everything all right well video is gonna be playing here and we'll see you right after

• 21:05

hello glorious Ashes of Creation community welcome to another stream day inside of

• 21:10

Ashes of Creation the world's a little lonely right now our month-long alpha one test has

• 21:16

finished and there are no testers to be seen near me which is probably good for them because i just wanted to take a

• 21:22

second i know last uh stream i gave a a masterful

• 21:29

description of a new mount that had been introduced called the terror bird

• 21:35

and i wanted to actually you know complement that very well done description

• 21:40

with actually seeing the the terror bird in game

• 21:45

um and so yeah like i said it's good there's probably no testers around because this guy is hungry very hungry

• 21:51

uh but i just just wanted to show you guys uh it in game we have a lot of work ahead of us

• 21:58

towards alpha 2. part of that work is of course introducing content into the game and and uh the different creatures and

• 22:04

mounts and all the quest lines and fleshing out the core systems that we demonstrated in in alpha one and and

• 22:10

this guy's this guy's part of that work and uh that stuff's making it into the game we have a long road ahead of us of

• 22:16

course but um we got a great amount of feedback um from alpha one across our

• 22:22

our forums reddit uh social medias discord um even if you weren't a tester

• 22:28

and we love our testers but even if you weren't a tester you know participating in that conversation and giving your

• 22:33

feedback is a super important part as i've said many many times um but yeah

• 22:38

take a look at this guy he's pretty cool we're gonna have some variants of him in soon as well um you may remember

• 22:44

actually i think i have one more amount i can show as well you might remember in the past we showed off

• 22:50

um some of the model work under the thundering bolt beast and now his

• 22:56

animations are complete our masterful animator uh bradford constantine i think did the

• 23:01

animations for this guy um i like to call him the chicken runner because when he's on land he kind of runs to me like

• 23:09

a chicken a little bit he's just kind of strident you know enjoying life doing what you do

• 23:14

in the world of vera and uh he can sprint on land as well i believe is one of his initial abilities

• 23:21

let's see oh yeah he just takes longer strides but something that's cool about these

• 23:26

guys is particularly these types of mounts that have the ability to glide is of course you have to

• 23:32

level up the mount for it to get a greater glide distance so initially it might not be

• 23:37

super super capable of gliding let's see hold on let's see if i how far i can glide all right here we go wait wait for it

• 23:43

wait for it and oh look at that okay not too bad not too

• 23:50

bad that glide i mean for not having been leveled up at all the glide's pretty good

• 23:55

um but as you level him up he'll be able to glide further and further and further and further um if you manage of course

• 24:02

as you know if you manage to become a mayor of a metropolis or the king or queen of a castle or if you get this guy as like a limited time drop off of a

• 24:08

world boss then you'll have the ability to be amongst the very few who can fly him

• 24:14

and when he flies he is majestic oh i love the cool tail and all the the wings

• 24:21

on him it is pretty awesome this guy um so yeah just wanted to jump in give you take a

• 24:28

look uh give you a look at some of these some of these creatures of course you guys saw some of the combat changes that

• 24:34

we did um oh we've got some flowers down there hold on one second we're going to be continuing moving

• 24:39

forward with those combat changes one cool thing you might see as well is some of the adjustments to our visual effects and just art overall right as we move

• 24:47

forward for example this radium burst we get a lot of feedback about the sparkles

• 24:53

and in the first pass of course sparkles are easy to do but now that we've had some time initially to kind of look at

• 24:58

that feedback you'll see the radium burst effect has changed to something a little bit more indicative of what

• 25:04

effects are going to look like going forward um i love this little plank creature

• 25:11

guys when they die their pedals just go flying but yes so a little short update uh in

• 25:18

the empty game world of Ashes of Creation right now as we continue development towards alpha two uh but i

• 25:24

will see you guys back on stream here in just a little bit

• 25:31

and we're back oh my gosh the petals falling off that death animation is so

• 25:36

cool i feel bad every time that things dies it's so beautiful and then um when i was

• 25:42

watching the bird of the thundering bald bees fly i was like oh okay maybe it's a little weird

• 25:48

why did i design that i don't know i know i think it looks great it's a it's a cool beast you guys will notice

• 25:54

in the also in the footage that there's some heavy clipping that's some just general touch excuse me touch-ups after

• 26:02

excuse me after a mount is added to a game you know you're going to have those types of clipping issues but those will be touched up

• 26:09

and you know it's cool uh with the thundering bulk beast actually you know a lot of people have always asked like well what's going to be the degree by

• 26:15

which you can actually glide with these types of gliding mounts right and that's

• 26:20

something that has to be built up over time for the mount itself as as as it

• 26:25

levels up essentially and i think we might even include this is some design discussions we've been

• 26:31

having um you know there's variance among the speeds that mounts can have

• 26:36

based on how those mounts get introduced into the world whether it be through the animal husbandry system or whether it be

• 26:42

through merchant tables or through rare drops or granted by title

• 26:49

requirements they'll have varying degrees of abilities like speed and they might also

• 26:56

have uh modifiers to their glide distance as well um so that when i just

• 27:01

jumped off it was very very little glide like there was no glide at all almost but as you level it up or you get higher

• 27:08

uh training for the mount the um abilities to glide will be much further and further and further um so that was

• 27:15

something that was cool but yeah no i love i love the way it looked when it was flying i thought it was cool though all little wings on so many wings

• 27:22

um all right well let's talk a little bit about um you know what design has been doing um we'll we'll step back a little

• 27:30

bit and talk a little bit about alpha one um what data did you guys gather and

• 27:35

how do you think it's going to be helping us as we move forward towards alpha 2's milestone

• 27:41

sure so a lot of really what design has been focusing on as part of these last since

• 27:49

august 15th has been kind of drilling into

• 27:55

the existing documentation around our core mechanics and systems and applying

• 28:00

what we visually observe during alpha one for example one of the big systems obviously is combat right combat is a

• 28:07

very integral component of any mmorpg it's the most tactile um interfaced with

• 28:12

system in the game and and you guys saw some of the initial combat changes that we um

• 28:18

were able to roll out during alpha one but now as we move forward towards alpha two we're really gonna start expanding

• 28:24

fleshing that out further adding additional polish for those because there's a lot of subtleties that go into

• 28:31

uh combat right and um many of those subtleties have to do with ui and how we

• 28:36

present information to the player they go into you know specific timings

• 28:42

with with our frames in the attacks um for weapons they go into kind of the

• 28:48

ability design and and what we learned from that so so as design kind of observed uh feedback both from players

• 28:54

as well as collected the data from alpha one we're using that to kind of um

• 29:00

re-analyze and actually we have about i think we have after this retrospective i think it's probably gonna be at least i would say

• 29:07

two to three weeks of many hours that will be taking up my uh daily schedule

• 29:13

with the design team as we go through what we call the pitch phase where each designer is assigned essentially a

• 29:21

particular system that they go through the documentation for and based on observations from alpha one or based on

• 29:28

the discussions that we've had with the community they start identifying components of a particular system and

• 29:35

presenting pitches for how we might change uh those particular systems in anticipation for alpha two and then

• 29:41

though that pitch gets presented to myself and to our design quorum um and to the other designers where it's then

• 29:48

open for conversation and discussion and uh obviously it's very helpful to have

• 29:53

the documents that community provides the developers so that we can get a good summary of

• 30:00

what's out there from a discussion standpoint amongst the community and we can incorporate that as part of our internal

• 30:06

reviews of these systems and those pitches um so that's that's generally what um design

• 30:12

has been up to uh thus far um from an actual implementation standpoint um

• 30:18

there are some additional uh components such as a tool request to engineering um

• 30:23

helping to flesh out additional uh parts of the world map as we're moving towards alpha two obviously it's a significant

• 30:29

expansion of the world so that's going to incorporate um you know everything across the board from design from

• 30:36

narrative to world pop to level design to um fleshing out itemization and additional

• 30:43

resource components like there's a lot of stuff that's on the on the plate for alpha 2. that design is now

• 30:50

essentially going to be helping to guide the other departments as part of what our desires

• 30:56

are for alpha 2. cool cool and you know obviously we put together a lot of the feedback reports

• 31:02

um compiling that from like social media to you know our forums every platform that you guys

• 31:09

have ever spoken on um as well as even like data that we pulled from other places um how is design incorporating

• 31:17

those as they're going through these design docks that you guys are talking about for these pitches yeah generally so

• 31:23

um the first thing that we do is obviously we get an assessment of the the original dock and the system um and its

• 31:30

components and then in the pitch phase um when we are taking into account observations under feedback from the

• 31:36

community we are citing essentially uh topic discussions and community sentiment

• 31:42

across different social mediums whether it be our forums or reddit that you guys have provided as part of your summary

• 31:48

from the community right twitter for everywhere right yeah and and when we have discussions as as the

• 31:54

design team on how we want to move forward with either changes adaptations to particular things

• 32:00

we are referencing community sentiment how does that sentiment stay in line with what our uh core philosophies are

• 32:07

right our core pillars um now you know a lot of people have said we've got to be careful you can't listen to obviously

• 32:12

everything that the community says because there's differing opinions out there and i think that that's that's not lost

• 32:19

on us like you know we're not looking to fundamentally change the identity of Ashes of Creation through community

• 32:24

feedback i think we've kind of laid out what those pillars are you know we have gotten by on from the community with

• 32:30

regards to does that resonate with you guys and then um now we look to increase

• 32:35

uh essentially the the positive reception on these core pillars uh without changing fundamentally the idea

• 32:41

or the the the design of the game like this is this is what we're creating and the product that we're creating but if

• 32:47

we can resolve some of these problems and these issues that you all are worried about or encountering um with

• 32:53

the design that we have and still keeping to what we're trying to achieve i think that's totally you know obviously oh for sure we want 100 to do

• 33:00

that um cool um you talked a little bit already about what the design team is doing but in

• 33:06

regards to the engineering team obviously until they get those design docs uh to be able to start you know

• 33:12

going deep into those systems what are they doing in the interim

• 33:18

um in the interim i'm sorry i said when the last one time i had an emergency test

• 33:24

you talked a lot about or quite a bit about what the design team is doing specifically but you know obviously the

• 33:29

the engineering team is kind of waiting a little bit on some of those design docs what are they doing in the interim will they absolutely for those well

• 33:42

so they have their tasks uh for alpha 2 as well and and that relates kind of to the

• 33:47

outstanding feature work that's required and present still for the systems that we'll be bringing online in alpha 2

• 33:52

right so as we've said in alpha 1 and what a lot of people saw as you were watching alpha 1 you know these are

• 33:57

those are core systems those are the core functionality of those systems but there's additionally outside of that core functionality

• 34:03

there's obviously bells and whistles there's expanded functionality that we want to have present there's optimization work that needs to be done

• 34:10

um there's some tech debt that gets accrued as we as part of any milestone right you know you kind of you you

• 34:16

um for those of you guys who may not understand like tech debt as a reference but essentially as you're working

• 34:21

towards a particular milestone obviously you have the best of intentions with regards to doing things the right way as

• 34:26

you're moving through but sometimes as time dwindles away and you're getting up across the deadline um certain things

• 34:34

require a little bit more work than you have time to do and that's when we do in kind of stop gap measures and kind of

• 34:39

shortcuts on on some of those things which is okay to have a little bit of tech debt um and part of that process is

• 34:46

identifying what those two do tasks are in part of the code base going back taking out what was put in temporarily

• 34:52

and implementing the correct uh process as well so that's a little bit of what engineering is doing as well but they're

• 34:58

also participating in in the retrospective and and also identifying

• 35:03

um some of the uh uh core features and what technical implementation was utilized in order to present those core

• 35:09

features and how we should rethink some of those things um you know obviously it's not as good

• 35:14

excuse me it's not going to be sorry about that um it's not going to be

• 35:20

as intensive um as actually writing the the system over again or having to re-author it obviously but it is

• 35:27

identifying where certain areas can be changed um as part of of of writing a particular um

• 35:34

mechanic um and how that interacts even with other mechanics as well he doesn't have covered you guys he's

• 35:41

just no no i'm just had a cuff i'm sorry ever like yeah you just kind of have that right

• 35:46

like i said sometimes i just talk too much honestly i think it's just a dry i just get a dry throat and the more i'm

• 35:52

like talking the worse it gets and yes it's not wine in his glass it's water yes the water helps

• 35:58

you always drink it out of like what looks like a wine glass so people are like is he drinking goblin goblet

• 36:04

he's just fancy af okay um in regards to engineering they also were

• 36:11

working a little bit more on some of the things for security that came up um and

• 36:16

obviously some things that we're looking forward to doing in alpha 2 do you want to talk a little bit about that as well

• 36:21

sure absolutely yeah so you know for alpha one and those you guys who kind of

• 36:27

observed we actually had a relatively stable uh environment for alpha one i mean there were a few times where we

• 36:32

have to bring up the servers you know back up again and there were some security attacks that we had

• 36:37

um that we had to address it wasn't really our primary focus at least on the ancillary security components of the

• 36:44

game obviously in the game code itself you know there though there is um uh

• 36:49

there was a focus on making sure that things were secure there but like login and authentication and ddos protections

• 36:56

and dos protections like that wasn't really at the forefront of our mind for alpha one which is fine

• 37:01

because when they came up during alpha one i was actually very impressed with our team's responsiveness and the

• 37:06

ability to deploy countermeasures um as part of that process and i don't hold

• 37:12

anything against you know people who come and probe you know the security protections like in a way that actually

• 37:18

helps i mean i would prefer they come to us and tell us directly but in a way it helps our investigative process it helps

• 37:25

the way that we're able to deploy hot fixes you know those are the things that we want to get out of the way in alpha

• 37:30

one and you know i know at the end of the day even if malicious actors are are targeting us it's like you know they're

• 37:36

targeting us because they want to play a great game hopefully ideally if you encounter an exploit or a

• 37:42

bug or something security oriented uh we would prefer you reach out to us privately you can dm me

• 37:55

but if you dm one of the community team members like the community managers or me uh we will get on it right away like

• 38:01

those things are things that you know we're working with engineering on all the time um so and we have had people

• 38:07

reach out to us in the past i like somebody said hacked out of love copium

• 38:13

okay maybe a little bit of copium but regardless it was great to see the team's response to that because um you

• 38:19

know we had issues i felt so bad i'd be like calling somebody up at 3am i don't know

• 38:24

i know but um we i thought we performed very well in that so without regard going forward obviously alpha 2 is where

• 38:31

we're going to employ more stringent security measures especially around those ancillary systems and as part of

• 38:37

the game code even further because you know from our perspective obviously mmorpgs when you have a large amount of

• 38:43

players that are participating across many different systems and in a single environment you know there's always

• 38:48

going to be opportunities for certain individuals to do things that are a little bit unsavory

• 38:54

and um in that regard that's going to be a focus for us going

• 39:00

forward f2 all right um speaking of alpha 2 i know that people

• 39:05

are wanting a date we don't have a date for you so we will not be announcing that on this stream um you know when we

• 39:11

do have a date we will let you know but obviously right now our main thing is kind of going through making sure that

• 39:16

we have all the systems in you know ready or getting those things ready and prepared um and figuring out the time

• 39:23

frames that those things are going to take tasks things like that so it's going to be a little while

• 39:28

uh but we will we will let you guys know when we are ready uh to let you know um when alpha 2 is coming

• 39:34

in regards to alpha 2 can we talk a little bit about what the users can expect in alpha 2 i know you won't be

• 39:40

able to go through everything because it's a lot but yeah the highlights maybe

• 39:45

yeah honestly alpha 2 is really taking alpha 1 and

• 39:50

fleshing out all of those systems much much further right

• 39:56

so one of the main things is going to be obviously node progression outside of just stage three

• 40:02

perhaps up to um city if not metropolis stage for alpha two um

• 40:09

another component is going to be uh drastically increasing the world size

• 40:14

and that incorporates obviously a significant amount of other work such as all the quest lines the level of

• 40:20

progression you know incorporating secondary archetype choices having augment

• 40:25

capabilities as part of the combat system and the skill trees um incorporating the weapon skill trees as

• 40:31

part of that um having a vast array of diverse creatures to select from having some more of the

• 40:39

uh um spawner influence and changes that get adjusted in the world based on node

• 40:44

progression uh incorporating more of the parent vassal system and how nodes

• 40:50

interact with each other expanding out the uh the gills guild

• 40:55

skill trees um really doing a significant revamp on um gathering and

• 41:01

the way that we're actually gonna start demonstrating the real gathering systems the itemization and crafting components just

• 41:08

general artisanship tree um you know those are those are big big portions

• 41:14

of what needs to be done but also dialing in on you know things like diminishing returns

• 41:20

and the way that buffs get applied and or debuffs get applied um the types of

• 41:25

um the types of um status effects and status conditions and

• 41:30

how they're represented to the players uh there's a lot of a lot of stuff that goes into moving from alpha one to alpha

• 41:36

two and just to make sure you know you guys as you're as you're viewing and you're tuning in and and this gets

• 41:42

viewed on youtube or or the vod later um there's a lot of work that's necessary

• 41:48

for alpha 2. and with that regard of course we're going to be keeping you up to date and margaret and her team are

• 41:53

going to be keeping everybody up to date and interfacing with you guys as we move forward but from a amount of work standpoint there's

• 42:02

going to be some time here where there's a little bit of down time you know we had a lot of of kind of showing of

• 42:08

what's happening behind the scenes and and alpha one itself and you know there was no nda attached and you got to see

• 42:13

players in the world and that's all great but now we really need to heads down focus on alpha 2 we have a

• 42:20

lot of work ahead of us a lot all the teams have a lot of work ahead of us and there's going to be some down period

• 42:25

between alpha 1 and alpha 2 there will still be some spot tests we'll still invite some of the testers from alpha one back to um to participate as part of

• 42:33

the spot test become necessary dictated by our developers um but um

• 42:39

you know there's gonna be some patience to be had um and uh you know as we as we spend the

• 42:46

time that's necessary to make sure we're getting things right and they're incorporating the right feedback that we receive during alpha one and stuff yeah

• 42:52

we just really want to set expectations um and when we are ready to tell you the alpha 2 date we will but in the interim

• 42:59

uh we will be continuing to do our monthly updates you guys will get to see the progress i think you know i'm even

• 43:05

looking back and seeing a lot of what you guys say already is like you've watched the journey and it's been

• 43:10

pretty cool to see that it's gonna it's gonna be even crazier because we're gonna have some really cool stuff come

• 43:15

online and so you're still gonna see those systems as they come online and um piece by piece um and of course new art

• 43:22

and like just basically everything from our teams i think you'll actually see more stuff from design especially as we move

• 43:28

forward because now alpha 2 is really where a lot of those other systems are going to be starting to come online that

• 43:34

you know we're very much in engineering's field and so we can't really show you what

• 43:39

engineering is doing uh although uh mcp has offered to show me code i was like

• 43:45

probably shouldn't show that on the stream um but yeah we do have lots of cool things for you guys planned a lot of dev diary

• 43:52

stuff will be coming back online once the studio's ready and stephen approves that i can start recording in there

• 43:58

and yeah we just got a lot of cool things planned so even in the interim we we will continue to share updates with you all

• 44:04

and even some more behind the scenes stuff once the office is ready for that so with that i think we're ready to move

Environment Art Update

• 44:11

on to environment if you are i am ready okay

• 44:18

um the first thing we want to discuss actually with in regards to the environment update is that they are

• 44:23

currently working on terrain and node r d um before i even show you guys some of

• 44:28

the art stuff that they have they've got for me to showcase do you want to talk a little bit about what that research and

• 44:34

development is and um how that's going to be incorporated in the game

• 44:39

the r and d4 i'm sorry kind of terrain and node oh node yeah absolutely so um

• 44:45

you know as you guys saw in alpha one the nodes weren't super visually aesthetic right

• 44:53

they were they were functional they had the buildings placement they had npcs

• 44:58

that spawned they would grow in size the territory of collection for experience would change

• 45:04

um you know the the base functionality of the platform technology and how they're procedurally generated that was

• 45:12

functioning as well but from a terrain perspective essentially the plug of terrain and how

• 45:17

the terrain changes when a node advances making sure that it's seamless at level

• 45:22

zero making sure that it has um you know foliage that's properly placed and when

• 45:29

you get into the layout having some height changes having uh different

• 45:35

materials for the roads and and just kind of spending time on prettying up the nodes

• 45:41

part of the r d component is obviously going to be examining how much

• 45:46

we can change the terrain and and make it very seamless when it's set in the

• 45:51

world for for the node itself but also extrapolating out from just stage three

• 45:57

into stage four into a town into a uh a city and eventually a metropolis a lot

• 46:03

of r d is going to be placed in not just how we achieve those

• 46:08

larger footprints of the node itself but the location and placement and what

• 46:14

parameters design has to set as part of the platform tech for particular buildings uh specifically i saw a

• 46:21

prototype that one of them did and that was pretty cool they were like prototyping the

• 46:27

yeah the um yeah bucky collins did a great amazing great job using um a very

• 46:33

uh um i think he was using java uh to create this

• 46:39

this uh so on the world map of vera right he has these locations set for every single of

• 46:45

the 103 node locations and then we've incorporated he's incorporated a um a

• 46:52

point system to determine the value of each uh essentially district each parent node as it absorbs other nodes and and

• 46:59

through that kind of we can run simulations over and over and over and over again um to

• 47:06

to play out the way that nodes are going to um to move like for example one of

• 47:12

yeah well i guess i really shouldn't give that information but um this this stuff in the back end which is

• 47:19

predetermines essentially how nodes progress from a territory standpoint

• 47:24

that's a very uh important component but from the environment side on the r d stuff you know that's really going to be

• 47:30

like you know how can we make sure that node placements are equitable when it

• 47:35

comes to sieging and defenses of those particular nodes the types of number of gates you have to make it through in

• 47:41

order to reach the town center um you know not having too much terrain around

• 47:46

a node that just makes it so easy like if a node's in a basin and like you can have trebuchets on the top of terrain

• 47:52

like raining down fire out of the range or fire for you know attack back from the from the node itself like that's

• 47:59

that's part of the r d the research and development aspect of of determining the right type of layouts that need to be

• 48:06

preset from a parameter standpoint as part of this procedural generation because we also want nodes to look very

• 48:11

different we don't want nodes to look the same right so for alpha one it was just about standing

• 48:17

up the tech making sure the tech is working correctly that we're collecting the experience that we're surfacing the stuff to the player and now as we move

• 48:24

towards alpha 2 we really need to to dial in on the r d aspect of okay we

• 48:30

need to define these parameters accurately we need to theory craft out each of these parameters and each of

• 48:35

these node locations as they progress what impact is that going to have on things like sieges what impact is it

• 48:42

going to have on things like you know having those buildings and npcs present and what number um of of available plots

• 48:50

are possible at a maximum stage node so there's just a lot of stuff that goes into it

• 48:55

yeah sorry i can ramble so just cut me off when i'm talking no you're good you're good um all right i'm gonna swap over and i'm going to show you guys some

• 49:02

concept art so first thing i have here is the volcano landscape that they're working on

• 49:07

i love seeing the concept art because you know you you guys have seen some of the concept art in the past of the

• 49:13

different terrains and then we show you the screenshot of ingame and it's like it looks exactly the same it's so hard

• 49:20

to tell sometimes because our artists are just so amazing but can you talk a little bit about what this area is

• 49:26

other than obviously volcanic so this is uh lava and you can tell it's lava because it's bright and glowing a little

• 49:33

bit um you know i'm just just kidding okay uh no this is uh obviously there's

• 49:38

a feeling control me there's a wide array of different types of biomes that's present and one of

• 49:45

these components is obviously how do we portray landscapes that are not just beautiful

• 49:51

but are also dangerous um and you know there's obviously environmental hazards and effects that can be part of these

• 49:57

types of terrains and we want to not just show always the prettiest side of vera but also show the the more

• 50:04

you know um i don't say vulgar but like the more um antagonistic aspects gritty the

• 50:11

gritty dark yeah exactly so that that includes stuff like corruption and how it kind of perverts the land or these

• 50:18

more kind of apocalyptic scenes uh where you have these you know large flowing

• 50:23

rivers of lavas you know emanating from a giant volcano and because we're able

• 50:29

to like significantly increase the draw call distance that you can see the world around you it's cool because you may see

• 50:36

this volcano from you know a 30 minute trek across the realm but once you reach

• 50:43

it you know not just because of the surrounding area that you see here that's concepted out but that there is

• 50:48

something deep in that volcano that's compelling like you want to go inside you know

• 50:56

in one of the concept arts it's like a double rainbow of lava yeah absolutely and i think i think the

• 51:02

great thing about these types of concepts is they're not just identifying the specific biome but they're

• 51:09

incorporating the type of perspective you want to have with those long draw calls right with being able to see that

• 51:16

mountain at a distance or having the you know the world lighting break through the clouds

• 51:22

that's present there and and i think that gives the environment team a good direction on you know not encapsulating

• 51:28

every trek across the world because a lot of mmos we've played you know those zones are super encapsulated like oh you

• 51:35

know i'm always blocked because there's some tall mountain that doesn't let me see beyond it and it's like right next

• 51:40

to me um or you know i have a very curated path that i have to follow and that that can just be a super boring

• 51:46

thing yeah if there's a waterfall there better be something hidden behind it

• 51:52

that's right um and of course uh steven talked a little bit about the

• 51:57

different nodes the first thing here i'm going to show you is actually a bunch of props for the duneer we're building out more things so we

• 52:04

have uh this is actually a fireplace it's work in progress one so maybe next month you'll get to see the final of it

• 52:10

um we've been showing a lot of the different stuff that's going to be in houses and in nodes this is a podium

• 52:16

uh that you'll probably see in a town um and then we also have

• 52:22

some bridges you can see a couple different variants of bridges here and i think we have an image for scale

• 52:28

in game with one of the bridges popped into the game obviously that's not where it's going to be but

• 52:33

they just popped it in there so you can see for scale yeah and these are important because as nodes advance again they

• 52:41

don't just reflect changes within the node's footprint but actually structures

• 52:46

will form like harbors and bridges that help to provide trade related resources more

• 52:54

world development components um and these are the types of of

• 53:01

structures you're going to see develop alongside the nodes in the world and then we have signs and then as well as a

• 53:07

defensive barrier one of the defensive barriers that they're working on

• 53:12

and then i will show you that i think that's the back side of it

• 53:18

it's because you'll be able to like set up defenses and stuff whenever your freehold is or your

• 53:24

your node is attacked um empyrean ones here are the next ones

• 53:30

so you can kind of see a very different version of these so these are some of the fencing

• 53:37

that you'll see very pretty very pretty yeah empyrean are

• 53:44

like their art is so interesting because it's still very refined but then it's got the

• 53:49

alvin and look to it which is really cool oh yeah

• 53:55

another fence um i believe this is a gate

• 54:01

yeah for defense you could open it yeah it looks great environment team always does such a great job

• 54:08

bringing to life these cultures you know it might not seem much as you view individual like fences

• 54:14

or fountains and these kind of props that are present across the world but when you start putting all of these

• 54:20

things together to represent you know an entire town village or whatever you know

• 54:25

they they do a great job um making these things all um

• 54:31

um exist in together it doesn't yeah cohesive doesn't make it feel like it's standing out or a part or

• 54:38

a sore thumb so to speak yeah and then these are some of the lighting like the sconces that go on the wall versus the

• 54:43

ground um versus just general ones that you'll be seeing that will help

• 54:48

light up the areas and then a weapon rack because you know you gotta have weapon racks

• 54:53

um and i think that's all of the imperium props yeah they are working on

• 54:59

you know uh flushing out a lot of those things creating more uh pieces that are going to make the world feel a little

• 55:05

bit more lively and also some of the things that you guys will be able to utilize in your freeholds you know like fencing for your

• 55:12

um your stables and your creatures keep them in you know so like we need a lot of those pieces so you're going to see a

• 55:17

lot of like furniture pieces for all of the um different races uh coming in

• 55:24

as you've seen each month progressively next up we've got character art

Character Art Update

• 55:30

uh i guess we'll start with this one this is actually where i was gonna leave off but um this is paula's cat

• 55:37

which is oh just oh my gosh the coolest thing ever

• 55:43

uh i was actually gonna end on this one but oh yeah i'll go backwards instead yeah that's

• 55:49

good look at him or her is it him or her i don't know ginseng will have to let us know this is

• 55:55

a ginseng creation it is so this is an in-game achievable mount is that correct

• 56:00

correct this is not a cosmetic one so this is not cosmetic this is achievable in game

• 56:06

now i'm pretty sure that this particular mount is probably going to be achieved through some of the animal husbandry

• 56:13

system um and that's likely going to be through the cross breeding of a of a normal

• 56:19

domesticated house cat and a bear a wild bear um i'm just

• 56:26

i'm just kidding i'm just imagining a house cat in a bear and i'm like stephen

• 56:34

i'm just joking people in chat were saying it should be making the same sounds that my cat was made

• 56:41

why are the cats making those noises no i'm just kidding um i can record some audio for you you

• 56:47

can use it perfect just have that playing on the freehold as like the sounds when you're

• 56:52

trying to make that would be so good no but this isn't in-game achievable uh it will be derived

• 56:59

through some method of exploring the animal husbandry system and then you can see it with the mount and the um armor

• 57:05

as well versus alone by itself next up i'm gonna go backwards so i gotta go we've got the black sight

• 57:13

watcher um so this is a cosmetic one this is from a halloween set previously

• 57:19

i helped design it's got like six eyes it's very cool and it's based off of some of the ravens

• 57:26

that were created so we built out some ravens i love the like albino vibe raven

• 57:32

it needs a red eye the the graven the graven the gray raven

• 57:37

[Laughter] maybe we make a really like really really pal one that has that

• 57:43

red eye for the yeah ooh i like the graven idea um and then we have the car the car mean

• 57:49

chameleon looks so cute this turned out so good this is part of the valentine's day uh set

• 57:56

very neat now is that's a pet it is a mount oh my gosh yeah

• 58:04

that i mean if you didn't have a saddle that would be really uncomfortable we could make him a pet too though

• 58:10

i'm just saying like if you didn't if you were riding that thing without a saddle like oh it would hurt that

• 58:15

crystal wasn't meant to be there you know what i mean like that would be unfortunate

• 58:20

don't bear back the carbine chameleon

• 58:26

oh no but yeah these are meant to be my

• 58:31

thought process is that i would love to have these be like in um like a cavern

• 58:36

and then like you don't realize that it's a creature and you go to like mine it and then it like comes out and attacks you

• 58:42

oh yeah yeah and what if he just like poops crystals and you can like harvest it [Music]

• 58:48

like that's one of his actions like his top tier action stephen 24 well oh that's true no it

• 58:55

would have to be a part of the base value yeah the basis yeah we could make a base creature that is coops resources

• 59:01

yeah i'm just kidding i mean it's probably gonna happen it's

• 59:07

fine uh the next thing we have here is the greaves of pride so you can kind of see like the final version and then

• 59:13

we'll also show you kind of the work in progress and how these work so sometimes you get to see the gray

• 59:19

scale versions of each of these things um like you did with the fireplace but this

• 59:25

is one where you get to kind of see the whole process of it i love i love the detail and i would say that um you know

• 59:32

partly obviously outside of the fact that we have very talented artists uh but partly the reason for these types of

• 59:39

detail on the armor sets and the weapons is that as part of your as part of our

• 59:44

home system you'll be able to have certain types of furnitures that allow you to place armor sets as display

• 59:52

uh and having those armors be intricately detailed like this one i think is going to be a really cool added

• 59:58

bonus to how each of the players customizes their homes and stuff oh yeah like housing decor people love to have

• 1:00:05

the models of the items put in their house i've seen people do that kind of stuff all the time or have like a room

• 1:00:10

like a dressing room with like a bunch of uh mannequins lined up oh yeah yeah with all like the armor that you're really

• 1:00:17

proud of from raiding and stuff um but yeah this is really cool uh i'm

• 1:00:22

still in shock of how amazing our artists are like it looks like the concept it's crazy

• 1:00:28

um next up we've got the fuming tincture which you can see this work in progress so this is actually a cosmetic accessory

• 1:00:35

item that goes on to like a bottle on your belt or that goes on a bottle that's on your backpack

• 1:00:43

that dangles from it so you can actually swap those things out and make like different looks and vibes and this is uh

• 1:00:50

yeah that means that a few years very cool a couple years ago i helped design this one yay

• 1:00:56

uh the next thing is the coil of crackling skies this is actually part of the set with the thundering vault beast

• 1:01:03

um this is one of the rings that you could get to see and yes you will have rings in game and look at that oh my

• 1:01:10

gosh i love that it looks great really great i want to see how like

• 1:01:17

rings like reflect you know how they're like shiny yeah i'd love to have like um jewelry

• 1:01:23

boxes as part of like furniture as well and like let you put jewelry in the box

• 1:01:29

you can propose to somebody with a little drawer oh that would be so cool because we are gonna have weddings oh

• 1:01:34

i'm so excited i'm so excited for like just community stuff like this

• 1:01:40

oh yeah we will definitely 100 percent have to have like a varan interior decorating show series on like oh easily

• 1:01:49

we will make that happen because i love that i'm sure there's going to be like also you know varying companies out in

• 1:01:55

the game world that sell their in-house decor services and like you can add them

• 1:02:00

to your family and then give the permission to deploy based on that right

• 1:02:05

uh uh for the for the property or whatever the past you had said that people we wouldn't provide permissions

• 1:02:11

like that uh for somebody else to come in and and like change oh pick up yeah they can access

• 1:02:18

like inventories and stuff but yeah that's something we have to talk about because in the past at other

• 1:02:24

places that i have um worked as well we've we've allowed people to do that and it's been pretty cool you can like

• 1:02:29

hire somebody to like help interior decorate because people would like make a hot tub out of like crazy weird stuff

• 1:02:37

like putting them together it was that's true um we should let i like somebody said um

• 1:02:43

magisto as he said how about cleaning them we should have houses get dirty

• 1:02:48

over time and like if you don't clean them like you take a approaches and stuff

• 1:02:54

yeah you get like a negative on like the house uh decor functionalities um and

• 1:03:00

you could hire cleaning services

• 1:03:05

good luck with that but uh some games do that like animal crossing has it after if you don't come back for a while

• 1:03:11

there's like little bugs and you have to go stop right yeah yeah it doesn't have to be too crazy you could have it you got to make your bed

• 1:03:17

in the morning that would be funny we're going into sims now which i love

• 1:03:22

so um this is the lorica vindicta set um which was our march set for this year

• 1:03:30

uh cosmetic set really cool

• 1:03:36

and we have a turntable yeah that looks great

• 1:03:41

sparta i was going for kind of that you know

• 1:03:47

uh march ives vibe you know oh the ides of march march

• 1:03:54

this is vera this is not so much spartan

• 1:03:59

per se but true don't have to have no chest plate if it was spartan yeah

• 1:04:06

uh there'd be no breastplate there

• 1:04:11

sandals nice sandals yeah of course steven we'll have to get stephen a pair of these sandals

• 1:04:17

oh yeah actually i'm not allowed to wear sandals anymore i know it's very sad how can you be sandalore

• 1:04:23

without wearing sandals i don't know i don't know it's so sad

• 1:04:28

all right well next up we have threads of fate which looks amazing

• 1:04:35

bless you they didn't hear me but you didn't bless you uh my allergies are going crazy so

• 1:04:41

that's why i'm keep coughing and sneezing yeah eli did this set i believe and we even made he even made the

• 1:04:47

weapons which aren't part of the the cosmetic that you get um we'll find somewhere to put them but we will yeah

• 1:04:53

we will find somewhere to use them and we have a turntable of this as well

• 1:04:58

so you can kind of see that oh i love it it looks so good

• 1:05:05

great job eli looks very good we did a little zoom in

• 1:05:11

yeah we got really high oh nice got a little zoom in going yeah we have really

• 1:05:16

high quality assets for this so thank you for i always love when artists send us the the high quality stuff because we can we

• 1:05:23

can do more fun with it you should put these guys on like top of a ziggurat and like have the instead of the light

• 1:05:29

in the hand just like a pulsating heart and they're just like eating it

• 1:05:35

yeah i'm sure the design team is gonna find some fun places to put these uh but yeah just so you guys know any

• 1:05:42

any all of the creatures and npcs that we create for these monthly cosmetics you

• 1:05:47

are helping us develop the world these are going to be in the game as fds as creature variants etc um i mean you

• 1:05:55

probably already have seen them through alpha one um but yeah you're helping us really like build it out

• 1:06:02

next up we've got junior plate set there's two different versions of this

• 1:06:07

so this is the first one and this one's in-game achievable yes yes correct and you get to see the

• 1:06:13

progression path oh cool the armor set as well little horns on that one

• 1:06:19

this one has like a little mohawk yep so just again to give you context in

• 1:06:25

comparison uh between armor sets that are achievable in game and the cosmetic skins that players that people can

• 1:06:32

purchase obviously again our primary objective is that we keep those equitable that you

• 1:06:38

are not you know a lot of games probably as many of us have played you're forced to

• 1:06:44

to consider the purchase of cosmetic sets if you want to look good at all uh that will not be the case in ashes uh

• 1:06:51

there is both a path towards achieving really cool looking in-game items uh

• 1:06:56

based on your efforts and then also an alternative option in the cosmetic shop

• 1:07:01

and of course all of the cosmetics you have to own an item to put that item on correct so you can't just like

• 1:07:07

immediately went here and have the coolest armor um cool all right what is that what is that

• 1:07:14

have you seen that mean or meme where they're like um it's king theoden and ganos walking is

• 1:07:19

like there's no pay to win here gandalf stormcrow

• 1:07:26

and it's like i told you to take the wizard's credit card

• 1:07:31

oh my god i'm sorry you're fine it's funny all right let's move on to our q a

Outro & Q&A

• 1:07:38

um so we've got questions here from the community and if we don't answer your question here definitely go check the

• 1:07:43

forums uh toast and vacnar will be adding answers to your lovely questions

• 1:07:49

over there after this so even if you don't get answered here you may get answered there or they'll let you know

• 1:07:54

if you should um you know put them in for next time so half tilt gamer uh and pick a pick

• 1:08:03

pick a dollar for pick a dollar pick a dollar pick a

• 1:08:09

want to know about alpha one what were some of the team's biggest takeaways from alpha one testing i mean we talked

• 1:08:15

a little bit about that but yeah we did talk a little bit if you could pick one thing what's your biggest your like one

• 1:08:21

thing that you think you took away from apple one just one just one my gosh

• 1:08:29

um wow that's super tough there's so many

• 1:08:35

so many different things like uh i guess the biggest takeaway probably would be

• 1:08:42

the direction of combat and the fluid nature we want to have

• 1:08:48

uh between tab and action the direction on the melee combat the

• 1:08:55

great amount of work that the new ability system team did [Music]

• 1:09:00

especially on the back end side of things but the biggest takeaway i would say is

• 1:09:06

uh that we're heading in the right direction now we just need to add some further polish some bells and whistles

• 1:09:12

um and continue down the path of that morph referral melee component and the

• 1:09:19

really responsive fast type of feedback from combat in the

• 1:09:24

ability usage as well i think from mine my perspective it's definitely the user flow process

• 1:09:32

from uh you know downloading to um oh yeah you know patching

• 1:09:38

and getting in the game client i think we still have some improvements that we need to

• 1:09:43

make in regards to that um and obviously internally i think there's some live operations communications that we need

• 1:09:50

to work out and get those kinks uh set up but i think those those to me would be big takeaways from the perspective of

• 1:09:57

like what we were trying to test in this alpha one for sure um feedback from audenix wants to know

• 1:10:04

and i'm or adenix wants to know about feedback i went dyslexic there for a moment uh what is one thing you wish us

• 1:10:12

testers and community members better understood about the development process in order to give more valuable feedback

• 1:10:18

ooh can i answer this one sure i think for feedback the best things

• 1:10:23

that you can do are a brief sentence on what the issue is that you're encountering repro steps on how to uh

• 1:10:30

reproduce the counter uh what you what results you had and then the expected results i think that to me

• 1:10:37

is the most confined way to provide like bug feedback in regards to feedback feedback i think being concise and like

• 1:10:44

giving us like what your problem is uh and then kind of what you expect to be happening

• 1:10:51

versus what you think is actually happening i think to me allows us to really understand like what you're

• 1:10:56

trying to get to because for instance um i worked on a previous game where you know sometimes you are

• 1:11:02

you find out that the issue that somebody has isn't the issue that they're saying for instance we had like a weapon and someone was like oh it

• 1:11:08

feels like it's not doing as much damage as the other weapons but then i went in and looked at data and i was like oh they're doing exactly the same amount of

• 1:11:14

f or you know dps so it's not a damage problem problem on the data side it's actually an animation problem that's

• 1:11:20

making it feel like it's not doing as much damage and all we did was alter the animation and

• 1:11:25

everyone's like oh this change is so good it does so much more damage and more like it doesn't really do any more damage it just feels better because we

• 1:11:33

understood like oh the problem is that people feel like it's not doing enough damage

• 1:11:38

yeah um i this is a hard question to answer just because

• 1:11:44

you know what's to be expected with transparent development is that players won't know the difference on a lot of

• 1:11:51

development related you know things of course that's why as you said it's important to give good context behind

• 1:11:57

any of the feedback right because then it allows the developers obviously to read into what you're

• 1:12:02

saying specifically and and know with their development because sometimes the issue you're encountering isn't actually happening right so we'll go in and we'll

• 1:12:08

test it we're like oh that's not happening and then if you don't we don't have context we're like well it's not broken so yeah

• 1:12:14

what i would what i would say um that's helpful to me in addition to what you described margaret is um

• 1:12:20

i think one of the things that's important about being a tester in an environment like ashes where you're

• 1:12:27

where you're fundamentally testing a true alpha system um is

• 1:12:32

be willing to spend some time outside of gameplay to read through forums and what

• 1:12:39

other testers are have said and are saying as well because that will better help contextualize your feedback also

• 1:12:47

and it'll give you insight to what others have been saying uh maybe may have you think a little bit differently about your experiences i think that's an

• 1:12:53

important thing i also think one important thing and it's not really something that testers or or non-developer audiences can do per

• 1:13:02

se um but i would say an important part is is

• 1:13:07

understanding the stage at which the development is supposed to be at um

• 1:13:13

meaning for example like when i say hey we don't have much of the ui implemented

• 1:13:18

at all a lot of this is placeholder and then if a response or feedback is like you know i hate this ui well you know if

• 1:13:25

i read that and i'm thinking yes me too i hate the ui as well at this stage and

• 1:13:31

it needs to be more functional but that's something for a future testing period so becoming familiar with what

• 1:13:38

you're testing and why you're testing what you are testing um i would say that's an important thing but let me

• 1:13:43

just say without with that question being answered because we do provide you a list of what we are properly testing but with that

• 1:13:50

with that question being answered i will say our community has performed amazingly when it comes to feedback and

• 1:13:57

when it comes to testing because true testing is a is is a difficult task

• 1:14:03

i mean it is it is a very redundant slash repetitive slash monotonous slash you know

• 1:14:12

you're not playing a game and that's something that we've tried to say many times in the past about alphas uh with

• 1:14:17

at least with regards to people don't buy unless you want to help the development process right yeah but i think which is really funny from a

• 1:14:23

marketing perspective don't buy this it is funny but i think we saw super positive response from the community

• 1:14:29

regardless of that right and even amongst our testers i mean um we had we had great response from our

• 1:14:35

testers from our community the feedback was and even if the feedback is redundant or not necessarily applicable

• 1:14:41

to the testing period itself at least reading what the players are saying gives us confirmation that our

• 1:14:49

intentions are down the right road of what players want to see and that's always a good thing as well

• 1:14:54

all right we took a long answer for that i'm so sorry no i think it's great i i think both of

• 1:15:00

us it was an important question because it because it references the community specifically yeah i know i love that you were telling people kind of like read up

• 1:15:07

i think a lot of the times even on the community side from our perspective our community managers are basically

• 1:15:13

like broken records they get very used to answering the same question over and over again we do supply a lot of answers for you on our

• 1:15:20

support site like literally there's a kb articles for almost everything uh the community has an amazing wiki with a lot

• 1:15:26

of answers like if you just take a moment to do a little research on the question that you have you might find

• 1:15:31

the answer pretty quickly um because everyone in your community is just amazing otherwise we are helpful we will

• 1:15:38

answer the question that we've answered a million times uh cronus wants to know about split body versus root motion

• 1:15:44

based on recent feedback what direction are you leaning towards in regards to split body versus root motion i think

• 1:15:50

we're leaning towards split body well i don't think we are leaning towards split body i do think i think very often and a

• 1:15:56

lot sometimes too much but in this regard split body he thinks a lot and he makes decisions

• 1:16:04

george black wants to know action versus tab targeting are you still considering whether the

• 1:16:10

combined action slash tab targeting combat will be replaced by either tab only or action only

• 1:16:17

um no i think that we will find a healthy medium between the two i think that really

• 1:16:23

what it comes down to is the definition of of action and i think that there is a varying degree

• 1:16:28

of of opinions on what action targeting means um so to speak but as i've clearly

• 1:16:34

defined in the past and as you can research in on wiki our opinion on at least my opinion on

• 1:16:40

action action combat um is i think well represented in the way we want to hybridize

• 1:16:49

that combat in Ashes of Creation and i think that there is going to be a

• 1:16:55

good balance between those two and it should be a seamless transition between the two as well

• 1:17:02

and you know we're going to be fleshing that out further as we move forward and i'll answer this next one which is

• 1:17:08

from imperial slash pyreal you want to know about dwarves will the junior be seeing an update on their appearance yes

• 1:17:14

you all have sent us a lot of feedback we are going to be showcasing a lot of the those changes next month probably

• 1:17:20

i've been working with production to try to make sure that that kind of gets pushed a little bit forward so that we can at least show you guys some work in

• 1:17:26

progress changes next month on our development update so stay tuned uh we heard you uh a lot of us love dwarves we

• 1:17:33

agree um so you'll be seeing some changes coming up i've been working with um ryan richman who's our lead concept

• 1:17:39

artist um on some of those um uh changes that we'll be making to the junior

• 1:17:45

dwarves to make them more um traditional fantasy stout looking

• 1:17:51

dwarves right boys thick boys and girls um but yeah that's uh i don't know if

• 1:17:58

it'll make it by next month because there's some revisions that we're here are going back i think we're going to show some work in progress not okay it

• 1:18:04

won't be final stuff um obviously it's going to take more than a month to to finalize those bad

• 1:18:10

boys because bait like the base of the models that they create like are going to you know

• 1:18:16

affect everything going forward and the dwarves that you saw in alpha 1 actually

• 1:18:21

will be more similar to the nikua as well so

• 1:18:27

something to be said about that oh nice um all right and then we have from seth

• 1:18:32

rago wants to know about orcs will the more goblin-esque vec be as

• 1:18:38

short as dwarves or just slightly shorter than their renkai brethren

• 1:18:44

no i believe they are slightly shorter than the value but slightly taller than

• 1:18:50

the uh duneer so they're in between the two and angelicia

• 1:18:57

wants to know about stats are our stat points strength sex and granted statistically as we level based

• 1:19:04

on our class or can we re allocate them as we wish kind of like adjust them so

• 1:19:10

as of right now definitively there is going to be a tattooed system which will allow certain slots for you to apply

• 1:19:18

um stat migration uh but it's a give and take relationship there will be higher quality

• 1:19:23

um uh magical tattoos that can be applied to the character uh in order to

• 1:19:29

to um adjust stats uh but for the most part exactly

• 1:19:35

yes yes tattoo system i think we've talked about that in the past too so if something's like what um

• 1:19:42

yeah so one one uproad wants to know about nodes will the type of nodes of each

• 1:19:48

location be shuffled before launch so that beta testing doesn't reveal their

• 1:19:53

secrets unfortunately no beta testing will require that the node types be definitive and that's because of how

• 1:20:00

node types are integrated into the relating and corresponding neighboring points of interest uh and those quest

• 1:20:06

lines so it's not something we can swap very easily right and each wants to know

• 1:20:12

about corruption will there be any large-scale consequences when many players in a

• 1:20:18

group guild region religion etc become corrupted frequently or for an extended

• 1:20:25

period of time oh interesting question it is an interesting question but no there are not group dynamics or

• 1:20:31

mechanics that revolve around mass murdering people in the world

• 1:20:37

i've the corruption system is intended to deter mass murdering uh not to

• 1:20:43

provide incentives by which players can go out and gain corruption so

• 1:20:49

so that would be a little bit uh anti-uh i think they're wondering if there's gonna be consequences

• 1:20:55

large-scale consulate so for instance i think the question is more along the lines of like if our if my guild has no

• 1:21:01

one corrupted and your guild is like 80 always killing people and always corrupted will your guild have

• 1:21:07

repercussions because they're corrupted versus my guild no i don't think so either and the reason why is you know we

• 1:21:13

want to deter it but we don't want to make the system meaningless and if the deterrent becomes too heavy-handed then

• 1:21:20

it's a system without a purpose um and you know i think that the intent behind

• 1:21:26

the corruption is that like during of you know a rise in passion and like anger and whatever you want to make this

• 1:21:32

decision and do something and you'll suffer the repercussions later but if those repercussions are

• 1:21:39

just overwhelmingly bad and even anti-social in the sense that like your guild is like hey man you went corrupted

• 1:21:44

and this gives us like corruption points on the guild and like you know you're out of here like then then people just

• 1:21:50

aren't going to choose to use it and then at which point might as well just take it out so i think there's a healthy balance

• 1:21:55

between the type of deterrent used as you know keeping players not performing this corrupt activity very often yeah

• 1:22:02

people would just group up and not like being a guild basically there's there would be a way around that right like

• 1:22:07

yeah um next question is from hakaiju and they want to know about

• 1:22:14

careers will there be development or design related jobs available at the amsterdam office as well and

• 1:22:21

i don't think well we have development like design related jobs um not design

• 1:22:27

but there might be there's like live streams oh i see okay uh yeah no not design related like live operations and

• 1:22:32

publishing so that's like uh community team marketing and marketing production exactly yes

• 1:22:39

um but probably not so much on the like development design side design art slash

• 1:22:45

correct engineering cool all right um do we have time for a couple bonus

• 1:22:52

questions or should we wrap things up here we can take one more the best question you can find okay romeo 1d3 no

• 1:22:59

i'm just kidding all right oh wait hold on ready all right it's a four so two okay so

• 1:23:08

brain dances question um there was three questions that were on here as bonus ones uh this one is in regards to

• 1:23:14

caravans based on risk versus reward and pvp flagging not applying to caravans

• 1:23:20

what does a player risk when they attack a caravan versus defending their caravan

• 1:23:27

got it what do i what do what do i risk when i'm like gonna go attacking a caravan

• 1:23:34

well um there's going to be gear degradation that occurs on death um in

• 1:23:40

addition uh obviously there's a time component and also um you know there's

• 1:23:45

going to be a associated quest system that determines when you're participating in a assault

• 1:23:52

or a defense of a caravan that it's going to track your record of

• 1:23:58

successful defenses or successful attacks and if you have failed attacks or you've opted in to participate and

• 1:24:04

you have a failed attack essentially you did not achieve your achieve your objective that's going to count against

• 1:24:09

your record in the quest system so these are progressive quest systems where you are you are achieving

• 1:24:15

something as either a highway robber or defender of caravans and your successes in each of those categories is going to

• 1:24:22

determine the types of rewards that you're going to scale up over time based on that record

• 1:24:28

and that's the incentive slash disincentive not to um uh participate in something you don't think you will have

• 1:24:34

the ability to achieve interesting all right well with that

• 1:24:40

that's our august development update so thank you all for joining us we really appreciate it of course final reminders

• 1:24:46

we do have dev discussion and guild gathering up right now please get your answers in as our community team will be

• 1:24:52

compiling those and we will have our new ones coming up here in september we would love for you

• 1:24:58

to get involved in those so that we can gather your feedback and make changes that you are interested in seeing and

• 1:25:04

being part of our development of course the august cosmetics are going to be swapping over on september 1st so if you

• 1:25:11

want those snag them up now and with that we will have the vod of this will be up on twitch right away and we will

• 1:25:17

be uploading it over onto youtube along with our website and all of that jazz afterwards and on twitter and facebook

• 1:25:24

and instagram give us a good follow we're in all the places at Ashes of Creation we try to keep you up to date

• 1:25:30

almost like daily um with new content and new engagement um and new fun things

• 1:25:36

for you guys to help us out with and all of those things get reported to our development team so please do so we love

• 1:25:42

it and we love seeing all of the amazing fan art and fan creations that you have so keep sending them our way we love

• 1:25:47

seeing them and we will keep you guys update updated on all of the things as we move forward oh and everybody needs

• 1:25:54

to wish margaret luck tonight because she's going to get her butt kicked on some talisman [Music]

• 1:25:59

[Laughter] savage we're going to be playing some board games so yeah he thinks he's going

• 1:26:04

to win i think wow all right we'll see you guys next month

• 1:26:11

bye everybody [Music]

• 1:26:26

[Music]