Talk:2017-05-15 Livestream
Transcription
Character count: 54904 | Duration in seconds:3517 | Characters per second: 15.61
Hello everybody welcome to our Monday live cast we have a pretty awesome guest with us today he's well-known in the MMORPG community the Lazy Peon is joining us for an awesome Q&A session how's it going Lazy Peon
Hello thanks for having me I really appreciate it
Yeah absolutely we're fans of your channel I think you do some pretty amazing content it's well done it looks great and you give some pretty good input to the MMORPG genre I can tell through your videos that you're very passionate and I think passion is something we share
Yeah definitely yeah I think we can all agree that we've all been waiting for that next big MMO and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping the Ashes of Creation can be that game
We're hoping too
Cheers to that [laughter]
Oh we got the Bacon the Barbarian and we have joining with us today I have Geoffrey Bard lead game designer hi everybody we have Peter Pilone and a game designer here and we have the Baconator behind the curtain and it is Baconators birthday today actually so happy birthday Michael Bacon
Happy birthday Bacon [laughter]
So tell us a little bit about your channel and what makes you love the MMORPG genre Lazy Peon
Cool so I'm the Lazy Peon I'm mostly known for my YouTube videos in which i do first impressions things of various different MMOs I've also started live streaming different MMOs on Twitch a lot more recently and I really love MMOs for the whole multiplayer aspect the feeling of being in big epic battles is something that you can't really recreate in any other genre hence why I'm reall into MMOs I'm a bit of a PvP fan personally yeah
Oh very cool nice yeah we share that too yeah I love to pitch huge battles I mean I remember you know in every MMO I've ever played there was always a reoccurring theme of where there are these large battles that can be had and you know I think they create some of the most enticing stories
And just that persistence to where it's like you know the server doesn't go down it's it's the same story the next day you you get to you get a history that you don't get from other session based games
Yeah exactly
Totally so why don't you start shooting us with questions
Okay so
Don't shoot us please
So so the first question is Ashes of Creation is currently receiving a huge amount of hype for an MMORPG there's a lot of features you're promising and a lot of people are skeptical when it comes to the scope of the game because it's so huge it seems like you want to include kind of a bit of everything really are you worried that you're promising too much and won't be able to live up to people's expectations kind of like no man's sky for example?
Oh my goodness you did not just bring up that title on the stream uh no so I mean obviously you know going into the Kickstarter you know we've spent the past 15 months here with a pretty experienced team of of MMORPG veterans and we've we've calculated down to our Ts and Is on what exactly we can accomplish in scope the systems that we have drawn out and whether or not those systems are you know requiring of new technology or they can be done but just in a different way
Right
And I and I think that where we are presenting the game in a way that's generating hype because of the ideals were sticking to in our design philosophy right like meaningful events and consequences you know no pay to win no cash grab dictating the narrative on the server those things aren't huge scope but they're very appealing for players because they haven't been done utilizing the technology that exists today and constructing a game with that at the forefront of our design philosophy
And also like a big part of it is letting drivers Drive that conference letting players drive that content which is you know for us it takes a lot of the scope off the table right when we don't have to like prescript all of these different kinds of ways of players have to interact with the world right we kind of set things up for everybody and then let them go and you know obviously the biggest part of our design is going to be the content part right but I mean we're we're really capable of doing that I mean we've had plenty of scope meetings where where I have to argue my position and say probably something we can't do
Yeah
And and there's a lot of stuff we've left on the cutting room floor and this is what we've what were you sharing with you guys is kind of the stuff that we know we can get done
Yeah we kind of you know when going into our design discussions here at the studios you know me personally obviously I dream big right right and
And that's great and we love it
Yeah and sometimes you know we got to chop off a few things that maybe are too big
Right
Things so you know we've we've already as Jeff said gone to the cutting board and this is what we've presented as scope that we're capable of achieving within the timeline that we presented
Okay so that's good to hear so you definitely have enough people enough staff to kind of fulfill this massive MMO that you're planning?
Right I mean right now we have 14
Mm-hmm
or 16
14 or 16
14
14 that are here in the studios full-time developers and we actually just launched our our another hiring spree where we put up our ads for new positions I think we're bringing on eight additional this month
Okay
Probably by June
Yeah probably by the by the middle of June I would say and then you know we have plans to grow the studios in the next coming quarter that's probably going to bring our total team to a size of around 40 for the before the end of it before the end of it
Okay
Well continue to grow past that too we have specific milestones in place that we're going to need specific head counts in order to fulfill and you know while we're here right now in pre-alpha we don't need as many people once we start getting big into the content part and that's that's when we're gonna start needing those extra heads
Okay that's really good to hear so eventually you won't just be a small indie studio really it will kind of have a big enough team for the kind of thing a triple-a studio would would release eventually
yeah and if that's what people's worry are as far as scope is like we realize that we can't do it we've we've sold with 14 people that's not going to happen
It's something we've carefully mapped out over time
Yeah 'cause with some MMOs you hear like new kickstarter MMOs coming out they're promising the world and they've only got three people working on it so things like that it's a little bit hard to believe for people so I think it's really nice to that you're bringing on more people to make the game more of a reality
Yeah and that was always I mean that's always the plan yeah right I mean it was it was never the idea like as you said we're going to complete this project 14 people but at the same time we want to make sure that the growth is something that maintains our culture here at the office
Right
You know keeps the focus on the fact that we are passionate MMORPG gamers and that we don't grow too quickly that we lose sight of-
Yeah
Right right
So it needs to be a structured growth and that's something that we plan
Yeah
Okay I like that answer so next question would be as a new player starting the game can you give us a rough idea of the things we'll typically be doing for the first 10 to 20 hours of playtime?
Okay so I mean it's going to depend on what kind of player you are we're going to have starting zones for every race and that'll sort of get you get your feet wet and in all of our systems right so you'll be doing a little bit of crafting a little bit of combat a little bit of dungeon delving a little bit of everything just so you can kind of see how the systems work and get a feel for what you want to do in the game but that's not required right yeah we want to go and run out into the wilderness and start working out a node that's totally something that you can do you know a first level player could conceivably explore the entire world they would have to be very careful and do it very slowly and and take a lot of risk but that's something they can do
Okay interesting will Ashes of Creation have player-to-player trading will there be anything stopping me from gifting a friend that's fresh to the game a bunch of in-game money to help them get on their feet quickly?
There won't stop you from doing that however you know we are cognizant of the fact that you know there's a potential for that to be abused yeah gold sellers to items or people to purchase with real life money things and and we have taken security as a very important aspect of the game that we've we've begun production with you know it's not something we're applying afterwards right constructing the game with those metrics available so that we can quickly ascertain whether or not count is doing something wrong or you know if they're constantly trading out money [garbled] just have so many friends out there that they've never interacted with before until they give them this money so you know we're cognizant of that fact but we also want to maintain that trade ability between friends [cross-talk]
Yeah trade trade is going to be really important
So yeah that's basically answered my next question which was like every MMOs had issues with with real world trading obviously with free trade that would be something you would have to combat have you got any anti botting systems that you plan on introducing to the game?
So we have a really robust security protocols and systems in place and that's both against those RMT transactions like you said and against botting in addition being a subscription-based game helps us to to make the barrier a little bit higher for people that want to participate in those types of grey market activities and coupled with the security systems we have in place and are building the game with I think we're going to be pretty successful in combating that obviously we're not going to be a hundred percent successful because nobody can
Yeah
But we're going to have a really high threshold
Yeah I know for me and a couple of other guys in the studio we come from this this MMO background and we've seen we've seen it all we've seen every bit of it and the most important part when designing a game like this is to be really proactive about your security and that's that's on all levels so from day one basically that's something that we've been looking at and been working on and engineering so it's not something that we're going to you know get to launch you'd be like oh my God look at all these gold farmers
Yeah
Yeah
We are we are ready for that right now so so that's something that's been really important to me and then to a bunch of the other
We have some pretty good partners even out studio yeah okay people who know what they're doing
That's cool that's good to hear will gear and Ashes of Creation be bind on equip can you sell gear that you've already worn basically?
So we're going to be staying away from a lot of bind on equipment yes and a lot of bound items we're not that doesn't facilitate the objectives we have for our economy
Okay
You know
We we are going to have items that yes you can equip and then can sell later and we think that with our regional economy system that we're developing and how crafting works in the game that having those items available to continue to trade and exist within the marketplace along with our items things that we have helps create that healthy economy
Right and it's always cool to be able to say hey I just got this new weapon you want to use my old one I mean that that really helps kind of like helping other players your your close group of players to kind of maintain relevancy throughout the entire experience
Yeah
And then also there may be some binding but it would probably be the exception rather than the rule
Right
Okay great another gear related question will Ashes have separate gear sets for PvP and PvE
No
No
No
Okay
It's something that's really annoying for me when I have to get my second equipment set right and it sucks when I have to grind up two different sets for myself and I think that whole I understand the reason for it there's there's really good reasons that that happens in games but again it's one of those things would if you're designing from the beginning with that in mind you don't necessarily have to resort to that
Yeah
We want we want gear to be epic in and of itself not you know not enclosed into one section of the game's mechanics right all the game is designed to flow together both PvE and PvP
Yeah
And it just doesn't translate well if you know there are two separate
Right if I'm attacking this mob over here and then all of a sudden there's a siege over there and I don't have my PvP gear with like though it just doesn't work very well if we do it that way
And we think the gear in general I mean it makes it more desirable if everyone's using it it makes the market a little bit better and robust for that so from the economy perspective we think it's a good idea as well
Okay okay so I'm I saw on your youtube channel recently you released a trailer for a new class and it showed the class was due it was climbing walls and doing some kind of parkour and I was like really amazed when I saw this I thought this game's gonna have climbing is that can you go more into the details of the climbing in this game?
Yeah so I mean we are gonna have aspects of mobility and climbing and different type of traversal utilities and it really goes towards how we're designing the classes I mean we want classes not just to have skills that pertain to combat but also skills that pertain to actions and events outside of combat and that could include different traversal hazards that could include potential hazards when delving and adventuring and exploring out in the world and those types of those types of actions are going to relate to certain classes roles so each classes as a class has a role in combat they will also have a role in utility as well
Yeah
So maybe not every class can climb or parkour you know that might be something that's inherent to the Ranger and the rogue you know but we haven't really finalized for sure those specific skills and where they lie
Yeah this this also comes down to scope but we want it's very very important to us that the world has a life of its own it is its own character and that it's not just a background it's not just a pretty picture right which is what happens in a lot of MMOs right because it's it's so easy to place mobs but it isn't necessarily easy to create interesting you know places you can go with with your character right and once you suddenly like allow like hey I'm the rogue and I can scale up this wall and you know there are siege mechanics and suddenly that Rogue has a role in the world that's that goes beyond just what they can bring to combat it's what they can do for their side and what they can do in the game I think
Right I agree with that
Okay I think if you're gonna have rogues that can climb I think I already know what class I'm gonna pick then
Well might not just me might not just be rode it might be there [Laughter]
Will Ashes of Creation have some kind of guild vs. guild war declaration system so you can PvP against other guilds without any penalties ye
Yes there are going to be Guild Wars and involved in the game and and not just your standard run-of-the-mill kind of Guild Wars you know we're thinking about more objective based Guild Wars that could include locations or you know specific items that a guild may own as victory conditions and or surrender conditions something that that kind of takes that that approach to this what bone you have to pick with another guild well now there's a new dynamic to that that you know has those objectives
Right it's always kind of a little bit weird to us when you've got a guild war that cuz kind of keeps going on forever right there's no end to it there's no nobody who can really claim victory without somebody just saying okay I'm done with this right like it's kind of anticlimactic there's no you know no real
Objective
Objective yeah and so so we're playing with some ideas there none of them have been finalized but if we can make it happen I think it'll be pretty cool
Yeah
Okay you've already shown us Ashes of Creation will have a lot of choices when it comes to different classes and class combos I'm personally someone that likes to play multiple classes if given the chance how alt-friendly will Ashes of Creation be?
I think we're pretty alt-friendly right?
Yeah I don't think we're gonna have any specific barriers to that
No I can't think of examples that would have any not alt-friendly things
So um for ex-
I mean I'm an altoholic too like if you look at my character lists I mean you've got 20 characters that are level 10 and that's just like how I like to play I like to kind of see how different things work together and kind of play with different builds so I mean it's it's just from that perspective
I do the exact opposite [laughter] I only have one character forever
Yeah that's not me but there's definitely not going to be any barriers to that that I can think of
Something I did ask earlier was about the gear not being bind-on-equip so if gear's not bind-on-equip could I send one piece of gear from my main character to an alt character for example would there be anything stopping me from doing that?
You could transfer the gear to well I don't think we're going to have item in the mail yeah do it to the old [cross-talk]
Or you could just make the the you know your storage like account based rather than character based but I'm not sure about that that's that's a little bit we haven't worked out those details yet
But preliminary answer is you know if you had an item set on one character you could move it to an alt
Right
How that movement would occur we don't know yet
Okay
That's something we're still playing with
It's not something we want to lock out basically
Right
Yeah okay will there be a level cap and if so what will it be also how long will reaching that level cap take roughly?
That's a good question and it's a question we probably don't have a definitive answer for you at this moment
Yeah
So wouldn't even want to speculate
Okay
Yeah I don't want I don't want to get people's imaginations going until we've really nailed it down
See we don't speak we don't pre-screen these questions [laughter] you can just ask whatever you want oh my god that's a good point what is in this box right now do you want some of this
Sorry I can't
You can't that
Ooh it's a double stuff
Is it double stuffed?
It's double stuffed we actually had this conversation afterwards you can tell I don't know if you want to hear me eating on camera so I'm going to put this right here
I'll just swallow it
Alright next question [laughter]
While Steven's eating Lazy Peon
What can we expect from questing in your game will it be your standard kill and collect quests or will it be more complex quests with multiple different stages for a single quests well it will you be going for quality or quantity when it comes to the questing?
So that is the answer that is yes we're breaking we're breaking things down a little bit right we I I personally if there's this thing that happens in MMOs it doesn't happen in any other type of game right where I always hear from people hey Jeff you know I love your quests but I never read them and and it makes me sad inside and I always cry a little bit but it happens everywhere and so one of the things is like why why is that the case why do people do that a lot of it is just because there's so much filler in MMO quests
Mmm
There's so many stories that get told that don't have any consequences that don't mean anything they're just kind of contextual things that give you a reason for why you're gonna go kill those five wolves so I decided to take those out of the equation right I'm gonna take those out I'm gonna put them into what we call tasks which are kind of node based kind of low narrative things that you're going to do that will help you in your normal day-to-day sessions the narratives the narrative quests which are going to be where the main story is told are going to be those big complex kind of places where you can kind of actually play an interesting game and rather than just kind of doing the same thing over and over again so I want anything that relates to the main story to be something really interesting to play and read through and to have as little fluff and and just just filler as possible
I think the other reason why traditionally in other MMOs it has been the case where you just kind of skip that stuff is because you really don't see what's being said there manifest in the world around you right whereas our approach to that and from a questing standpoint is everything you're doing in the world in some way shape or form relates to you and the others around you so there's there's a purpose to these events that you're participating in in the world and the more you know about it the the more capable you are to engage with that great line and actually have some self determination when it comes to how your character relates to it and how it affects the world around you?
Absolutely
Well that's why we split them into those different buckets with like events and then like how you mentioned tasks you know the long form like epic quest you know that everyone loves you know just because the some people are all about efficiency with quests go right through the literature so to speak and just go right to what that
Go ahead and call it efficiency it doesn't make me feel better
[Cross-talk] do what they do you know but we understand you know all walks of life for questing so we're trying to split those out into buckets and you know make it really engaging for player
And really focus on the things that people want to be seeing right like nobody wants to read bucket loads of text that doesn't mean anything right so if we're gonna give you text it's gonna be something that's important
Will we be getting multiple-choice quests where your decisions influence the outcome things like that?
Yep
Yeah absolutely that's a common thread in our quest lines I mean it just speaks to the whole basis of the game in in agency player agency so we want to allow people to determine their course within a quest and that have different outcomes
Right and then what you said about quantity over quality like that's what gives us that opportunity to do that instead of focusing on writing so much text for stuff doesn't really matter right we can focus on on giving people lots of options for the stuff that does matter
Not to say there's not extensive lore and story behind these events
Oh yeah 100 yeah that we're not getting rid of anymore like that's not going to happen we're just making the lore more meaningful
Okay
And despite us not having revealed a lot of lore I mean the reason for that on our end is because the lore is so extensive and deep that we want players to explore and discover that for themselves rather than being told hey here's the trailer to the movie and now you know how it ends good luck you know what i mean?
Right yeah yeah so with that being said we'll probably be leaking some a little bit here and there
Foundational lore
Just to give people a sense of like the themes and the kind of exposition that you might expect for something like this
Nice looking forward to it other than experience will there be any other benefits to questing perhaps certain quests unlocking the ability to equip certain equipment?
Yes especially with our goal that we're about to come up upon that 2 million dollar goal I think we may hit either tonight or tomorrow the social organizations will include quest paths that may unlock access to certain things within a Thieves' Guild or within a Scholar's Academy and those things are only accessible by people who have progressed within those social organizations to the degree they have
Right
Yeah absolutely
And then also a you know just as far as like finding recipes and and just kind of discovering the world there'll be lots of things that get unlocked as you as you explore the world and you explore the world through the narrative and you explore the world through the quests and so so a lot of that stuff will will be there there gonna be a lot of Easter eggs and a lot of hidden things later that I really hope people don't discover right away
Oh yeah
There's some fun stuff we're doing
Okay so is the game gonna be leveling through quest or through grind?
No grind no grind grind sucks we hate the grind okay I I mean what is the grind right like grinding is doing the same thing over and over and over again to get to an endgame that you know finally the game starts
I think we need to disassociate the word grind from time
Yeah
Because there is a lot of time that can be spent in advancing your character in different progression paths throughout the game whether it be through the religion through your adventuring class through your artisanry through building up Industry industry and structures there's a lot of different things that involve a great deal of time
Right and then also progress your characters
And that progress your character however the word grind refers to repetition and refers to you know getting nowhere for a long period of time we don't want that to ever be the feeling
Killing the same mobs for sixteen hours to gain one quarter of an experience bar
Oh my gosh don't even get me started
I think something needs [Laughter]
You know a major MMO that I played for a long time was Lineage 2 and like you would like die in that game and you would lose a couple percent and it would take you literally like 12 hours or 24 hours to get that back of just straight grinding and I really just want to like hit my head against a wall
Yeah it wasn't a great experience
It was not a good experience now there are other portions of the game that I love but we don't ever want to have that type of experience where you're grinding we want you to see the the efforts produce fruit while you're working your way and the time you're devoting to that path you're working towards
And we want enough stuff to do in the game that you're always engaged right where it's not just you go on autopilot but that there's so many interesting things to do that like you can't do them all you know and that's that's kind of where we want to go
And that doesn't mean also like in reference to the time it's gonna take to level I think you asked awhile ago it's not gonna be something where hey I'm in the game and I spent five days and I'm max level yay you know that's not going to be the case there is going to be some time devoted towards progression specifically in regards to the adventuring class and and and that will feel meaningful I think
And I think a lot of her focus on a macro level was really just trying to think of player motivations in general and just going well we know people are motivated for different reasons and there should be an avenue for them to succeed and enjoy you know the whole game right so there should be ways for them to advance
And have all those moments be fun right
Yeah
We want it to be fun we don't want it to be work
Or cumbersome
Yeah exactly we don't want you to come home from your job just to start another one
Yeah yeah I think something a lot of modern MMOs kind of give me the feeling of it's like you just kind of go through some boring monotonous task for five days or so you get to level cap and that's when the game starts I think if you feel like the whole game begins when you start that leveling process I think it'll be a big success
I totally agree
That's why we've designed so many different paths for you to advance and make progress in you know cuz it's not just like I've joined the game I'm a you know whatever class and I'm going down that road for my entire existence in the game and that's that I've reached the end you know whatever we have a lot of different paths that people get to choose from and progress in and it have participated exactly
Yeah will there be an intuitive grouping or will we be fighting each other over the different mobs we kill in this game if you know I mean?
Yeah I know what you I know what you mean I want there to be intuitive grouping so that means like hey we're all working on the same kind of goal right we're all in the same area right do do do we form kind of like a weird ad-hoc group so and are we all rewarded for that
Some of the some of the events that exist in the game are very intuitive grouping oriented right like we have area quests we have local quests we have events that occur and we have many societies that players will exist in whether it's their citizenship of a node the guild that they may be a part of a region that they may have a home in whatever it is it's intuitive to you participating with other players in order to accomplish a goal or defeat a task right
Right
And I think that that lends itself as a focus towards what our our goals are with Ashes of Creation which is hey we're getting back to that massively back to that community and we want people to work together to accomplish these things and on the other side of that coin you're also going to see people working together as an antagonist potentially to certain events better than things whether besieging of the nodes or castles or whatever the deal may be so I think yeah we have a lot of systems that are designed towards that intuitive grouping philosophy
Okay how will the world map be structured in regards to level progression since there's several races entering the world map from different directions?
So I think that what's often been done in the past is that you have you have a world map and and from the starting locations it works in a circular fashion towards progression difficulty down to the center we're moving away from that to a degree in the sense that the world in general is is an open realm of diverse types of difficulties that exist within all the different regions and that that like those events and those monster spawn tables are tied to the progression tables of the nodes as well so as a node advances in stages it will take those metrics of the spawn table for events and monsters and whatever else is in the area and it will advance with the stage where you'll still keep that diverse aspect of different content level within the region but it's going to include new levels at a higher rank and it's also going to expand on certain levels as it progresses until the point where at a metropolis stage you're going to see heavier high-level end activities and events spawning in around that location but you'll still have the potential for lower-level characters to have content available in that region as well
Right the goal is to kind of have the server level up with the population and and make sure that there is balanced availability of content for those different populations
Right
And that's throughout the whole world right so that there's not like this hey you have to go to this zone when you're level 10 in this little bit sewn when you're level 20 and this zone when you're level 30 it's more about what you want to do in the game and which know do you want to help and sort of what you want to do so you're kind of deciding where and when you adventure
And remember the whole backbone of the node system in general is that this is your way to unlock different doors to experience certain content that relates to both the location and progression of a node so that means that content within an area is is is introduced as that node progresses and is diverse in the level of that content
right now I think early on it was like a point for us to just say you know we don't want to be the typical hold your throughout every accent yeah I'm type game so that really lends it's that idea
By not holding your hand you get that sense of discovery back absolutely I'm gonna steal your water
Do it
Okay thank you
Cool but don't take my cookie I'm going to eat it just not now
Cool we'll each zone or city have its own music and if so what style slash theme will you go for
Oh
Say the first part about
Will each zone have its own music
Oh okay
So I mean obviously music is near and dear to my heart I know
Yep
Near and dear to everybody's heart for the most part in this offices and it's a part of the immersion
Yeah definitely
I mean you have you have the visuals you have the music you have just a rhyme and reason to mechanics that immerses you in that world and we want to make sure that that music reflects kind of the terrain that you're in as well
Yeah that makes sense
Mountainous terrain you're gonna have maybe some percussion rapid stream movement as opposed to if you're in a beautiful autumn scene you may have some piano and you know
We haven't thought about this at all
Right [laughing] no we've thought about it a lot so music is very important and it's going to reflect both the mood of an area and the terrain and and basically just what's happening there in addition to the seasons that we've implemented as well for zones a music is going to be a dynamic aspect of the worlds immersion
Mmm-hmm okay nice I think music is really important in in MMOs I think it's a good whenever I think about my first experiences with certain MMOs it's always the music that really yeah that takes me back there
If you play if you play me the EverQuest intro song like it just takes me back it's like immediate
Yeah and the old WoW vanilla songs as well they're pretty good will there be any equalized PvP in this game
Equally you mean like like [cross-talk]
Yes say for example you zone into some kind of instanced battleground for example when everyone's got equalized gear and stats
There may be in the arena battlegrounds if there are class specific competitions for different ranks within [cross-talk]
Yeah it'll it'll really depend on the context of [cross-talk]
It won't be in the open world
Yeah
Equalization
Oh yeah no never
Not in the open world
Yeah but we'll definitely work so again this is not something that's set in stone or anything that we're really you know seriously talking about we are seriously talking about it but we haven't committed to it yet but we are talking about like different rule sets for different types of battlegrounds and to sort of be able to do these tournament style and have different setups oh so we may find you know that certain types of battlegrounds do that
Right but not from an equalization standpoint I don't think
We might
Okay
Really you think so? I don't know
Just so everybody can participate but anyways [cross-talk]
We're talking about gear gear and like skill levels you know what I mean I don't know not in the open world there won't be in the open world there may be in arenas and battleground specific things
Yeah I'm glad to hear that because with equalized PvP it is an MMORPG and most people go for MOBAs for that kind of thing it is more of an RPG so you do want your gear to matter what are the punishments for dying in this game and do those penalties differ for PvP and PvE?
Do they differ for PvE and PvP
Yeah
At the moment they do not and I don't think they will but that's something we're still discussing penalties include things like experience debt penalties you're going to and that's not like to a de-leveling sense but you're going to accrue negative experience that may have an impact on your performance in the game with certain skills and abilities and you know we're still we're still talking about what exactly those death penalties are going to include
Okay so maybe things like debuffs and stuff?
Mm-hmm
Okay
Could be things like debuffs that might have some time to allow you to reenter you know combat or something so you can't just was you know spawn run
Yeah
Yeah
Those could you know could include like penalties on your overall health that could include penalties on your skill damage and percentages you're casting time I mean there could be certain things that are associated with this
Yeah
That we're still discussing
Okay will Ashes of Creation have any legendary items that are so rare that only a few people on a server will be able to get them it feels like in recent MMOs you just have Legendary's thrown at everyone to the point where the tongue legendary is lost all meaning it's like you get a legendary you get a legendary everybody gets a legendary?
[Laughter] that's what we should do [cross-talk]
Please no please no
We could make that a live event like Christmas or something
No no there are absolutely legendary items and they're not items that are attained easily nor are they granted out in a volume there there might even be items that are that are single single items that will exist on the server at any given time we want to get I mean the whole crux of Ashes of Creation is meaning right meaning to your actions meaning to to what choices where you go who you participate in the things you do with and and and what you know avenues and storylines you pursue and what's at the end of that road it needs to be meaningful and legendary items epic quests things that take a lot of time should be reflected in their scarcity in the world you know you shouldn't just have a whole bunch of those swords of Jeffrey
Right because then it reduces the meaning of them
Yeah
And it's it's when we talk about like secrets and we talk about you know there are going to be some really rare things in the game and there are things that I could see maybe we run five years and people don't find them
Oh wow
That's that's how rare we're talking about so so it's it's definitely we've got a range right like just because we have one hidden thing doesn't mean everything's gonna be hidden but but we're planning on because that stuff's fun man I love it when somebody goes and finds something and is like I had no idea this existed
Yeah
And this has been in the game for so long I can't believe nobody discovered that yet you know that's a really cool moment not just for the person who finds it but for everybody on the server so
Yeah that's what people on the server remember they'll be like YouTube videos made of it and it'll be a real moment in the game's history when things like that are discovered
Right
For sure
Cool I don't really understand this question too much I got it from twitch yesterday but how high is optimization prioritized by server and client side?
How high?
Yeah do you prioritize it
[Cross-talk]
As high as we can turn that it's like eleven eleven is where we are at or where we want to be
We want performance on the client side and both on server to be to be a peak epitome of what's possible
Yeah to be as good as we can get it without reducing what we want to show
Right
So it's a high priority we talk about it daily
But there's great things I mean one of the great aspects of UE4 as an engine is that it has a lot of optimization
Yeah a lot of stuff is baked in so we really don't have to reinvent the wheel as far as that stuff goes
Absolutely
Okay
That speaks just to the graphic [art of it [cross-talk]
It's always like sometimes I'd load it up our game and it's it's like wow I can't believe you know
What was it the other day you were getting like 60fps and it wasn't optimized at all
Yeah yeah
And it was one of the most dense centers of city with all these AIs running around [cross-talk]
And it was just surprising to see it because I didn't expect that so it's
And that was on on like a what 970 i think
Something like that yeah
Okay nice will there be any mechanics tied to crafting or will you just kind of gather the materials you need click a burn on a UI window and then the item appears?
We're still working
There will be a lot of mechanics involved in crafting I mean it we it's one of our pillars the economy and and a huge portion of that pillar is crafting and and that artisan tree and we want to make sure that it's engaging rewarding and has a lot of time that can be spent in there and you will see that time be spent wisely because of your impact on the world around you
Yeah again just like the the answer we gave on grinding is we want we want our systems to be fun we don't want them to be boring because like boring is the opposite of fun and we play games to have fun and we play games to like you know enjoy our time and if it's if it's just if it's if you ever have to ask yourself why am I doing this then you've done it wrong so
And being good at something adds to the identity it just doubles down on I am this
Right yeah
Yeah
Okay would you describe Ashes of Creation as being more of a group based MMO or single-player MMO or both both?
I think that I think that there's a lot of things that a person can do from a single-player perspective obviously I mean you could play the game as a single-player just because there are soft communities that you are a part of regardless of that fact like you're going to be a part of that node community you're going to be a part of the server's decisions to take out these at local and area quests that are pop up right up but at the same time we've included a lot of mechanics towards towards community building whether it be communities that's a guild player run guild or those social run communities or the node communities there's a lot of different facets where community comes into play for you and even if you're a single player you may get thrust into to events that involve community yeah and that's okay because you can go back to being the single player if you want to and at or you can stay within the community right you know it's like right there's there's a lot of versatility between the types of players that are going to be attracted to Ashes of Creation from both a community perspective and a solo sector
Yeah we definitely want it possible for solo players to accomplish things we don't want that to be something that people are locked out of but at the same time like the most fun you're going to have in an MMO is playing with other people so that's that's where you know
I mean there's a lot of great single-player RPGs out there right there are plenty of RPG that's a whole different genre MMORPGs I mean the first word in the whole genre is massively it's refers to the amount of players you're involved with
Right and we want to provide a good experience where like you get that right and it's it's it's that's what we're focused on
Yeah and whether it be a smaller group you know that's more focused we built for those in our day old systems and you could have a large guild that has a lot of different facets to it
Yeah we focus on scalability of all the groups of all sizes guilds of all sizes and you know the solo player is something that we have focused on you know and maybe that solo player doesn't want to participate in guilds then I guess you know to the heart of the question sure groups do more but like in reality there's a lot of stuff for them to do
Right
Yeah sure
Okay
It'll just be more fun if you're grouping up though I'm telling you
Right yeah that's true
Will there be any kind of acknowledgment when you're the first player or guild to achieve something difficult or rare in the game such as combat crafting just like a world-first achievement or something or server first?
I personally love that idea and I think that that's something that's gonna be prevalent in Ashes of Creation and I think there's going to be a lot of potential firsts
Okay
A lot of aspect of potential firsts
With the diverse aspect of how the world just exists there's a lot of things that somebody can be first at and they're wide-ranging things
You want people to know like stuffs happening in the world so it's it's I think it's more we talked about leaderboards for all sorts of different things and yeah we're gonna be tracking that stuff anyway so there's no reason not to let people know hey this guy just did a cool thing over here why don't you go check it out
And there'll be a lot of different as I said a lot of different things that they're being leaderboards potentially for
Yeah
And they won't just necessarily have to pertain to a single server they could be across all servers we can see the leader boards
Okay
Of those different servers
And not even just four guilds or groups were like kind of going back to your solo question I mean like discovery is a word that we've talked a lot about and mentioned a lot that we want people to discover the world things that like Jeff had said are secret or hidden etc you know we want that to be a part of it too so
Okay so in Ashes of Creation we already know there's gonna be a weight limit so you need to transfer goods with the caravan system is there gonna be any way to increase your characters base weight limit through in-game means or will it just be the same kind of static weight limit all the way throughout?
Well I don't think it's gonna be the same from when your characters created and all the way throughout I think that there's going to be different attainable items within the game that are going to eventually increase the amount of limits you can take but ultimately you're still going to have a limit that's going to require you to participate in the caravans system when you want to transit meaningful goods from region to region
It's it's a scalability thing right caravans transit goods on a scale that is much much greater than an individual character so we're talking about you know an order of magnitude bit probably so
And it's not and it's not that caravan the caravan system is solely related to the transit of personal goods there are many different applications for the caravan system there are a lot of quest applications for it there's a lot of node development application if you want to you know as a community as a node collect goods in order to assist in a trade route that's been established with another node in order to help construct a building potentially in that node that might be specific to its development you know that's a way that a caravans gonna be used if players want to as a guild build up nodes around the castle to increase its defenses that's one of the mechanics of our Castle sieging system you know caravans are gonna be used to transit those Goods as well it's not just a transit system that pertains solely to the transit of personal goods but it's also just a dynamic system that relates to the development of the world in general
Yeah so I guess to go in a little bit more detail there just as far as the way we picture it as if I'm a character I can basically carry enough goods to support myself right if I want to start branching out into the larger economy that's sort of when the caravan starts coming into play it's it's that scale once you start going to the mass market that's when the the caravan system really starts to come into play for an individual player
Right when you want to go to the macro level you know you're gonna have to take on more risk and that's kind of how we've approached
Right
You know that if you're a solo player you know you're comparably safe right but if you have a caravan you know there's a little more risk there involved in certain systems but you're carrying a lot more and so
And the caravan system is is one of our most in-depth systems honestly
Yeah
And it's very difficult for us to explain all the parameters in in one sitting or a few sittings of a QA which is why over the next several months we'll be releasing additional developer blogs that pertain to exactly what these systems are going to include and why they're necessary and how they assist both in the growth of the world and as your personal advancement and it's a really cool it's a really cool system that plays on our regional economy and how risk versus reward gives you that satisfaction if you can successfully accomplish this transit I think it's just it's a it's a really interesting dynamic and and it plays to interaction with players both adversaries and friends
Mm-hmm okay um quick question will there be a AOE looting in this game?
AOE looting?
AOE looting?
So say you um kill a bunch of mobs in an area will you have to loot them all individually or will you loot one and it just loots all of the mobs in the area?
I don't think that we've included AOE looting in our looting mechanics but
Yeah it's going to be something that we're gonna have to address when we get closer to that and start feeling out like what players are doing and how the whole system feels in general so yeah it's not something that was off the table but it's not on the table it's kind of you know
Okay
It's on the shelf
Yeah
It's on the shelf
Will you allow add-ons for Ashes of Creation?
Generally the answer to that is probably gonna be no
Probably gonna be no
But again this is this is a specific question that relates to something that might still be potentially on the shelf
Right yeah it's it's it's yeah there's a whole lot of yeah
I mean hopefully if
They're not Oreos by the way
If you design the user interface and everything well that there shouldn't really be a need for add-ons will there?
Right
Absolutely that's a very good point and and and my personal hesitation with add-ons is that you know there's a point at which potentially add-ons become a necessary tool for players to have
Right and they stratify they stratify the population in a bad way parsers can do some really nasty things to communities and you know when you're talking about a 1% difference determines whether or not somebody can join a party like it's you know it's it sucks yeah you know I understand the reason it's there and I love my parsers I don't think I you know it's but it's
It's like a toxicity involved at some point
Right
Yeah
And I think that the statement of if we designed the UI well which we are going to do you know there's not really a need for the add-ons
Yeah okay I suppose this can tie into the next ability next question and what are your design philosophies bird behind designing the user interface in this game and will the UI be fully customizable so you can like move things resize things?
Yeah we absolutely want to add a lot of customization for players to be able to you know direction the UI in a shape and form that's pleasing both to their eye into their functionality and there's going to be a lot of I think customizable options and like appearance on how that UI is
Yeah actually we've got that system in place right now you're not gonna see it on any of our our videos at the moment because we're still working on the overlay for it but yeah it's built with customization in mind and it's built so that you know you can change your UI every once in a while if you get bored and want
Okay
Make it interesting
Great um one second let me I've lost where I am oh here's one is there any way to change your character's appearance in case you messed up in the initial character customization?
Yes
Yeah I think we're going to have kind of salon shop items that allow you to go back to the character customization screen and change your hair color and face and whatever you want to do
Could be a barbershop that's something you set up on your freehold
Exactly ooh barber shop
On nice so this won't be something that's tied to the cash shop or anything?
That's a good question there might there may be there may be a cash shop item that allows you to change your cosmetics but there also might be some in-game method to do that as well at some point
Okay
We don't know the answer to that yet
I think I asked a few times before when it comes to the cash shop in this game as far as I'm aware how didn't you say everything that's available on the cash shop will be obtainable through in-game means as well?
There may not- no not everything
Not everything okay
But what I think to clarify that question is a lot of people are concerned when they hear cosmetic cash shop that like you know as other games have done in the past it's like no customization or no custom appearance or no cosmetics that are available through in-game means and it's like if I I'm look like a potato sack unless [laughter] I go to the cosmetic shop that's not gonna be the case in Ashes
Right
No potato sacks
Well there could be potato sacks
Could be
No but
Potato sacks confirmed
Confirmed alright
No so there's gonna be a lot of availability when it comes to cosmetics in the game there's gonna be you know dyes that are available outside the cash shop there's gonna be costumes that are available outside the cash shop there's gonna be a lot of things that players can achieve this a very diverse source of cosmetics
That's how we view it like achievements
Absolutely totally achievements and you know then there's also going to be additional cash shop there'll be additional cash shop cosmetics that can be purchased as well I mean it's very important for us to stay away from I mean we will never go down that pay2win path and we will never go down that cash grab scenario where monetization gimmicks are required in order to to you know get ahead of other players and and the alternative to that is we're a subscription-based game with no box cost right and we're also including a cash shop that's going to be purely cosmetic and those cosmetics may you know may have like seasonal items that are going to be limited in nature or limited in time and you know it just it helps us to continue to to create content that's going to then be you know introduced into the game on a regularly scheduled updates and stuff
Right yeah subscription is very good but marketplace is better
Yes [laughter]
I think this may have to be the last question right?
Really okay yeah we Peon we got one more question
Okay I think I've asked all of the main questions that I have so this is just gonna be one more I'll make it kind of flow into a bit of a long question because it's the same topic will you be able to change the control scheme in this game will there be can like support for controllers and if Ashes of Creation is successful will you eventually put the game on consoles?
Oh that's a long question
It's a huge question
So hey you'll definitely be able to change your control scheme right
Absolutely
Whether we can make the game usable on a controller is unknown at this point
I think it's a good possibility for the controller support
It's it's definitely a possibility but it's it's we've got to make some hard decisions if we want to go down that road right and then will we go to consoles it's it's
That's that's also something that we can't necessarily
Yeah I mean it's
It's a really hard question yeah
It's
Like I said we don't screen these questions everybody
Yeah
Yeah chat says no
We would everybody would like to everybody would like to it would be awesome if we could but it also brings a lot of attention away from us building the core of [cross-talk]
Here here's the answer that I think is most pertinent to that question no matter what our primary objective and solitary goal here is we're taking this to PC we're going to achieve all of these design elements within the timeline that we've we've laid out and that is our goal no matter what yeah if it is possible to include some type of console aspect or or controller support that's something for another day that we would address based on how things are developing with the production of our primary goal which is PC
If we're way ahead on our milestones and we're like hey we've got some extra time here let's throw somebody on
Whether or not you know Ashes of Creation it becomes a broader franchise that could see itself manifest into you know potentially a single-player RPG on a console thing that's a totally different story right Ashes of Creation as an MMORPG is focused solely on coming out the to market with all of these components and doing so in a timely fashion that we've laid forward that is our goal here at studios
Okay I think that's all of the questions of I've got I really appreciate you inviting me on here and answering all of these and I threw a few difficult ones your way
Absolutely we appreciate you being here man
Yeah thank you for your coverage of the game thank you for your support we honestly think you do a great job when it comes to content creation and we like to see you continue to do that and you're welcome to come back here and do another live Q&A whenever you want I think these questions were great
Anytime yeah
Thanks definitely going to be streaming and probably making a lot of content for the game when it comes out anyway as long as it lives up to what I kind of hoping it is [laughter]
Is that a threat?
I believe
I believe too
Thank you Lazy Peon we appreciate it much
Thanks guys take easy cheers
Have a great one man
Well I think we may have cut into our other QA just a little bit
Yeah sorry about that this time goes by so fast
I think we'll save those question yeah because that's an hour we'll save those questions for our next for our next session on Wednesday and actually we have on Wednesday we have a familiar face for everybody in the community he's one of our discord community moderators he's also a youtuber himself Deaths Proxy
Death's Proxy ebts is going to be our Q&A champion on Wednesday and then on Friday another familiar face for the community the creator of the Dungeon Crawler Network Aggelos is going to be our interviewer so make sure to hit both of them up on discord with questions that you want them to ask us and guys again we from the studios cannot express our absolute appreciation and gratitude for the amazing support that you've given us I think we're going to hit that two million dollar mark
I can't even believe it
Probably tomorrow morning afternoon-ish
Yeah yeah
Continue to get the word out tell all your friends and and let's bring Ashes of Creation to life together so thank you guys we appreciate your time and we hope that you enjoyed this Q&A have a great day we'll see you on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
Thanks everybody see yas