Talk:2017-05-22 Livestream
Transcription
Character count: 56554 | Duration in seconds:3621 | Characters per second: 15.62
Are we on
Oh sorry
Hello everybody welcome to our Monday it is Monday
It is Monday
Gosh livestream we're coming to you live from intrepid Studios and we're pretty excited today to have a special guest with us is going to be asking some some questions of a us for Ashes of Creation Mr. Robert Lashley Lashley
Yes yes it is
Welcome to the stream my friend we're happy to have you excited to hear some of your questions
Thanks I'm glad to be here
Yeah so we're having a pretty awesome time still on Kickstarter we're almost at 13,000 backers [cross-talk]
Real close getting real close
Just a few hundred off or even past the 2.25 million dollar mark with ten days remaining
I think that puts us I think
It does put us technically at number one
At number one Kickstarter
Yeah
Yes number one Kickstarter project so congratulations [cross-talk] For MMORPGs excuse me MMORPGs absolutely MMORPGs that start with A just kidding ah no huge congratulations [cross-talk]
Which is really cool [cross-talk]
It's awesome we're really excited about it we can't thank everybody out there enough for the amount of support that you've given our project we're dedicated and excited to bring this amazing game to you guys and we got ten days to go so let's hit that a new race and economic stretch-goal [cross-talk]
Yeah
That's cool
Mm-hmm
Yeah pretty excited so Robert you have been hopefully following the project and have a pretty good idea of what we're doing we're excited to hear some questions that you have for us all
Right I have and uh congratulations this morning when I checked you guys were about two hundred and twenty dollars short of Camelot unchained but I kind of figured you guys would end up eclipsing that by the time we talked so that doesn't put you at number one and uh I don't know if you realize [cross-talk]
That's amazing
I don't know if you realize it or not but if you even if you want to lump star citizen in with that while they did get to 34,000 backers they only had 2.1 million when they were on Kickstarter so
Do you hear how incredible you guys are [cross-talk]
That is amazing [cross-talk]
Like how totally incredible you are
Yes so that's [cross-talk]
That's pretty awesome
So that's good um
Robert tell us a little bit about what you do and who you're associated with I'm sorry MMORPG.com what is it that mmorpg.com is it is it's a stream right?
Okay so MMORPG.com is I would actually venture to say it's probably the world's premier website on the MMORPG genre it's been around for at least the last 12 or 13 years I believe it started off as a fansite for people to go in bitch about Star Wars Galaxies
Oh wait there is a key word there [cross-talk]
I remember that I remember that I remember that [laughter]
Complain about you know their favorite MMO at the time eventually you know it and then I'd say about oh man it's well over 10 years 12 years 13 years ago now when EverQuest II - and World of Warcraft basically launched at the same time
At the same time yeah
Like the EverQuest II people hung out an MMORPG.com that was their safe place I guess that's the correct [laughter] vernacular so that was their safe place to go and complain about SOE because you know they were all Star Wars Galaxies people there anyways too so it's kind of evolved since then I've been involved with the website for a little over five years now mostly written been on developer streams before did a lot of interviews with developers on ageing MMOs first one was with like Age of Conan when they hit their five-year anniversary did a lot of stuff with EverQuest EverQuest II I hosted a monthly stream with Dark Age of Camelot
Oh nice [cross-talk]
Yeah so everyone we went through on all three of the factions from the beginning to the end and spent five months with each faction going through the [cross-talk]
Oh that's cool [cross-talk]
RvR lakes and seeing the different perspectives of the factions at the different level you know brackets that would follow those different RvR lakes so that was a good time a lot of written work so recently I had a weekly column and now I'm just kind of doing some stuff of my own but still contributing there and you know hosting these developer interviews and things like that
Very cool awesome well we're glad to have you that's a pretty extensive history very nice [cross-talk]
I've I've done a quite a few of these developer interview Kickstarter's with Camelot unchained I think was probably the first one when Marc Jacobs was getting ready to announce theirs talked to Richard Garriott when they did Shroud of the Avatar I did not talk to anybody during the most recent one for Camelot now I'm sorry I'm said Camelot unchained Crowfall but other than that I've talked to just about everyone that's come down the pipe in the last five years and you guys are the most recent and the most successful to this point that I've got to talk to [cross-talk] and I also talked to Pathfinder well unfortunately that became like it is
Such a great tabletop RPG
Yeah it is a wonderful system it's great I it's a great IP and hopefully they can find somebody to do it justice someday unfortunately right [cross-talk]
See now I love Pathfinder tabletop RPG but I don't think you do like that pathfinder you're a D&D guy
Right
You like the fifth edition
Yeah
I'm a huge fifth edition fan [cross-talk]
I am everybody I am system agnostic if it's a fun game I'm gonna play it so
Got it got it oh I think you call Pathfinder mage finder
Yeah I think that slipped a few times [laughter]
It's it's an interesting system but anyways I guess we're not here to talk about tabletop gaming [laughter] even though the path for MMORPGs I mean we wouldn't have it MMOs so it wasn't for MUDs and pen-and-paper RPGs so thanks to people like E Gary Gygax and Dave Arnett and all those guys but it's actually really nice too and speaking of MMORPG.com it's great to see you guys lean into the term MMORPG in an age where a lot of developers especially triple-a space developers are shying away from the label
Yeah
Right now that's so true I think I think they're shying away from the label because the industry the genre has moved into into a territory that hasn't seen very good performance with some of the latest developments
Yeah I'm blaming it more on the tag rather than the game [cross-talk]
Yeah that doesn't seem like it makes sense to me I think that if we get back to what made you know the MMORPG genre is so great you know that's where we're gonna see the revival
Yep absolutely
That's why we're embracing that term
It's awesome so anyways before we get into like the nuts and bolts of the game since you guys are on Kickstarter and you're seeking funding I thought it was only best if we started off with a couple questions that did involve the money so when you come to Kickstarter for crowdfunding there's always the expectation that you should be more transparent with your finances to the public then if you were in a traditional developer or financier relationship whether that's a dev publisher or dev you know private funding as such I feel that it's you know potential backers out there that want to donate to your project have the feeling that they should know how you plan on treating their money so let's go ahead and ask maybe some of the not so fun questions and then we'll dive into like the gameplay questions
Hey I love finance those are fun to me
I've got a MBA in finance so that's that's what I like to do
Nice very cool
So you say that you have enough funding for a core viable product you know and in the valley core is a synonym for a Minimum Viable Product so what's your standard for the CVP that you guys could release even if it wasn't with the Kickstarter you know cuz we've heard a lot of promises from high profile and MMORPGs in the past that have maybe gone to Kickstarter that they'd release an MVP and it they'd iterate on that with crowd forging and it didn't quite turn out so well
Right so for me the difference between the term minimally Viable Product and Core Viable Product is that when I hear developers say Minimally Viable Product I don't think that you know they're going to be coming to market with everything necessarily they've discussed and wanted to have whereas for us a Core Viable Product includes all of the mechanics that we've discussed all of the systems we've discussed the Node system the Monster coin system you know the Economy the the regional marketplaces a core viable product when we're discussing the the product that we have funding to produce includes all of those systems we've discussed the the Kickstarter was for expanding those systems and making them more integrated into each other and the different pillars as well as allowing us now to include stretch goals and stretch backer goals that that include an add-on to the existing game
Right
Core viable game right
Yeah so you did mention on your website or on the Kickstarter that you guys have 40 years combined experience across the team and while that seems like a large number you know when you when you take it to 13 employees you know it's a big number in aggregate but when you average it out it's only like three years per person which isn't a ton so why?
So yeah so I'm sorry so the funny thing about our Kickstarter video was that it was not scripted
Okay
It was actually off-the-cuff so when I said 40 years we actually [cross-talk]
It's it's 40 years of MMO experience
Exactly
Not game development experience
Game development experience we actually have 96 years or above above 96 years
Okay
In combined game industry experience
Okay well [cross-talk]
So that was that we have we have a couple people here I've got almost 15 years now Jason's got 15 years
Michael has 20 Kevin has 20
Right right okay
David has 10 we've got 12 years of Tristan
Right [cross-talk]
Right so that ups my comfort level from about here to you know about there so that's a lot better you know 96 over 40 aggregate that's still seven somewhere in there but it's a lot better than [cross-talk]
Fourty of those years were specifically MMORPG
So
Yes and this one's gonna tie a little into that so I saw a lot of leads and seniors on the Kickstarter and that was more concerning when you thought that the leads and the senior might have only had three so
Three years experience
You're you know you saw you guys are in about close to two and a half it'll say it's two and half million the a lot of Kickstarter's get a big surge at the end so I literally think that you guys have the opportunity to have three million so who's in charge to keep you guys on the budget and what type of experience do they have I mean I didn't see really any producer role or a senior producer we saw more like design and art but not really the production side of the game
Well interestingly enough actually we're probably gonna see a press release in the very near future in regards to that specific position as a producer up until now I mean a lot of the the work here in the studios was pipeline production for art assets engineering work on the backend code of UE4 you know the technical artists stuff animations getting the world built from a level design standpoint so we have this large open world you know character effects and all that kind of stuff the the position of keeping everybody on budget and keeping a timeline for stuff has kind of been mine and Jeffrey's
Yeah it's been a combination of both of us I've been on the business side of game studios before and it's something that I've always been really plugged into I can give Steven a very good estimate on you know how long things take to build you know what pipelines are the most expensive what we we need to focus our you know work on at this moment versus you know a year down the line that kind of thing so
And I think that you see the quality of that performance here between the two of us in regards to coming to Kickstarter after 15 months what we've been able to show in in in relation to what other Kickstarters have shown and and I I mean I'm biased I guess but I believe we've shown a lot more than what other projects have come to Kickstarter with
Yeah and I would definitely agree with that and that's why I think if you guys are at the dollar value that you're at where as known developers have come to Kickstarter before and not and not been able to fund their project because they came with ideas and pictures where you guys have come with you know some alpha footage and everybody's good ideas ideas are a dime a dozen and not to be tried or reductive but you know if someone comes to me is like I got ideal that's like that's great can you put a pen to paper and actually put something in production and get something made
Yes
And that's what you guys been able to kind of demonstrate that's said to try to compare it to another Kickstarter because you know why wouldn't we you but this is the last one I'll ask about dollars and cents before we started asking about okay all right so Camelot Unchained Marc Jacobs came to kickstarter he was asked for two million dollars and said hey if you give me 2 million I'm gonna throw 3 million of my own money and with it so you guys are asking individuals to contribute upwards of $10,000 apiece towards this project so that's a significant chunk of change no matter who you are how much of your how much of your own money have you put towards this project?
In total coming to Kickstarter I believe I've put in almost two million just about two million dollars into the project so it was more along the lines it was kind of reversed there I guess between the camel it was more along the lines of area I'm putting in two million and then I mean above and beyond that you know that was just before Kickstarter you know whether whether or not Kickstarter saw the success that we've seen so far because we've resonated with a lot of people out in the MMORPG community and presenting Ashes of Creation as a as a viable divert from the course the MMORPG genre has been going and you know I'm committed to to funding the core viable product which is going to be upwards of you know probably around 30 to 35 million dollars
I think it's great that you answer that question and didn't just try and dodge it because it goes to show the community out there at least if nothing else that you actually have your own skin in this game because regardless of how many millions you do have two million isn't just something you're gonna find laying on a street corner one day like oh I can loose two million dollars that's no big deal
Ya know I mean for me personally you know Ashes of Creation is is a hundred percent a a passion project I mean I got started very early in business at fifteen you know creating an advertising and marketing company and then I moved in at 18 year old 18 years old into operating an online website that sold nutritional and vitamins and then at around 24 years old I kind of moved into real estate and investments and that's where I made a large majority of my success was through real estate and investments and over the past few years prior to starting Ashes of Creation and Intrepid Studios you know I had really just kind of retired and kind of sat back and played video games which was what I had always done throughout my entire life and when I was playing video games are playing MMORPGs and I just got so frustrated with what was available that you know I was is that the ice cream truck again
It is
Oh my god
He's got you timed to interrupt the stream he knows what's up [cross-talk]
I'm sorry sorry so I mean I really just got so frustrated with what was available that I decided you know I'm going to get together this amazing team and I'm gonna build the the perfect MMO and move away from this pay to win cash grab you know just non-inclusive stuff that's been coming out
Low risk stuff
Right exactly
It's where I think one of the cool things is that we can take a lot of risks here and that's all been enabled by Steven and
You can do that when you don't have a board to walk into
Right
If you don't have a board to come into they say what's the bottom line why are we selling you know why aren't you like this game over here [cross-talk] yeah exactly you know that allows us to perform in areas that other you know Triple A Studios cannot do or just you know other studios can't really do and and I think it's important for us to lead the charge in that direction and say look look at the reception we're getting look at how you know popular these these ideals are and if you do this you know you're going to see success and hopefully people will see that with this with this Kickstarter and moving into production man I really want ice cream sorry just drove by the front door anyways I think that that's an important and important aspect of our project is that you know we can lead the charge in the direction I mean think about this I think about I don't want well necessarily on the sense of dollars here but think about this aspect when you look at other projects that have gone to crowd sourcing that have gone to Kickstarter one of their primary hooks in their packages that they offer backers are in some way shape or form pay2win related they they give an advantage to the players and that's how they they intend to hook people to buy at the hundred dollar package access in addition to the Alpha X's and whatever you're getting pay-to-win items our Kickstarter has absolutely no pay to win item there is no item that is gained through a package that gives you a player the advantage over another and you know one of my I I wouldn't say concerns but one of my I guess you know like is this gonna work or not specifically in regards to how we are presenting the project how is that we don't have any pay-to-win and it will it be incentive enough to include those cosmetics and and show our ideals and presentation
And will the game be exciting enough for people to invest
Exactly yes and and and it turns out that it was yeah much more than those games that came to market with the pay2win stuff so you know I think that that that really sends a message [cross-talk]
The proof of the model
Yes
Yeah it's it sends a message that this is what players want
You know it's funny that you bring up pay-to-win because you did mention it in the video and it was something that I had written down to touch on later on but I'll go ahead and jump to it now since she brought it up even in there you did mention advantage but different people play games for different reasons and a lot of them view pay2win differently like I don't even think you ask a hundred different people what the definition of pay-to-win is you're probably gonna get like yeah you're gonna get a hundred different definitions of pay to win so what's the intrepid Studios definition of pay to win and what won't backers or future players in a couple years find in the game?
I think that the important thing to note about pay to win is this is you see a great variety of players when it comes to the MMORPG genre you see the hardcore 10 hours a day or 12 hours there's god forbid some of them are twenty hours a day that that are playing the game non-stop you see the people who only have a couple hours a day maybe to play the game when they get home from work or the people who may log in a couple hours a week or something along those lines you have a wide spectrum between casual and hardcore players and and pay2win came as a monetization gimmick that that studios could use to prey on the casual players that wanted to compete with the hardcore ones right and I think that if our game design is sound enough with some of the applications that we have for both casual players and and hardcore players to to both exercise their agency will and and effect over the game that they're involved with and have things to do that we don't need to rely on pay to win in order to monetize the subscription model alone when presenting a continually updated game a amazing fun game where people can be on a level playing field and in communities that are both micro and macro that you're going to see players enjoying that aspect without having to spend a hundred two hundred dollars a month that some of these pay-to-win games command [cross-talk]
Right or six hundred dollars a month it's unreal
In my case when I wanted [cross-talk]
Sure [laughter]
Right
They go whaling and they hook them [laughter] so let's let's go back to your video you started it off with a really with a little sentence it was an open world faction based I'm sorry an open world non-faction based MMORPG set in a high fantasy world that's a lot to cram in a single statement even though it's only maybe ten words so let's unpack that a little bit what do you mean by open world?
No loading time between zones
Seamless open world
There is nothing gating you basically
Right exactly
Okay so all the zones are interconnected it can run from one to the other
Yes
So it's not necessary gonna be one giant contiguous landmass there's gonna be lakes rivers oceans different continents possibly be terrain?
Yeah oh yeah they'll be terrain markers that kind of separate the regions obviously but you won't have to have a load screen when moving those regions
Right sounds great so will this open world be shared by all are we looking like a mega server like ESO we looking at different instanced zones shards house what's the tech like to support this open world?
We're looking at different different servers that have their own unique populations and they're replicated worlds yeah
So we're not gonna have a mega server you know we're looking at our population caps right no not quite sure exactly where they're going to fall but that's how we're going to separating the population we're probably going to do instancing only in certain dungeons
Where we want to have a greater narrative appeal and stuff like that
Right and then in battlegrounds and things like that or sorry arena's you probably won't see instancing too much anywhere else what you see is gonna be what you get
Okay so when you say that it's a non-faction-based I envision a world where there isn't a you know horde versus or alliance or Daggerfall covenant versus although whatever the rest of them are cuz they just are terrible [cross-talk]
Yeah there's there's a lot of potential in the game through mechanics and systems that relate to both nodes and organizations and guilds and castles where you'll see these pseudo factions maybe come about through player agency but there's not going to be a hard faction difference [cross-talk]
We want players to create their own side
Yes exactly
Okay so there will be that social glue that Bond's them together it just won't be pre-populated onto them when they're creating their character?
Right and that might be because of the economy it might be because of where they call home it might be because of what organization they're with it might be because of
And they're able to to to choose their own organizations even if they chose one they can move to a different one if they're citizen of one node they can move to a different node if they're in a guild they can move to a different guild if they are in an organization [cross-talk]
We see those these battle lines constantly shifting so that you know on day one the alliances and and fights will be different than you know it will be two months down the line
Correct
And we want that we want that kind of shifting shifting battle lines and shifting alliances and shifting you know friends and foes
Right and who wants to I mean for me personally it was always for faction based games like I want a different scene every now and then
Right
Like I mean not everybody wants that for years on end to be a part of the same faction maybe they want to to move around
And you can't do anything about it right like if I go attack an Undead place and you know game X like I can't really take it down I can't really do anything to disrupt that Alliance where in our game you can
And you're being told like who's your enemy you know and who's your friend and I may not like my friend and I may like my enemy you know I don't want to have to re-roll my character [cross-talk]
It opens up a door for intrigue and stuff like that and keeps it flexible [cross-talk]
Exactly oh yeah on a whole different level political intrigue and that kind of stuff [cross-talk]
Right that you won't find in a faction game 'cause there's no reason to
Absolutely
I'm sorry for the horde I said I'd throw it out there [laughter] if you had if you played Alliance we just can't talk anymore not alright no just kidding alright so this isn't a bad thing but there are more high fantasy games out there that you can you can shake a stick at so in whether it's board games taking it back to pen-and-paper there's so many different systems some of them have a little bit of what's sameness you know how much time was devoted into world building in a pre-production that will set Ashes of Creation apart from you know like Age of Conan which just happens to be another fantasy MMO that shares the acronym AOC?
That's funny
We prefer Ashes
Okay
We go by Ashes do you want to take this one?
Okay so we put a lot of I mean what differentiates one Elves and Dwarves from somebody else's elves and dwarves right and it really has to do with the lore it has to do with how these things are presented and it also has to do with like is it a bad idea to begin with right everybody likes elves and dwarves and everybody likes fantasy for the most part it's why you see so many games of that nature because people are just drawn to that kind of like you don't necessarily know what's going to happen so for us we spent a long time like trying to like pick out what do people like about dwarves what things can we do differently what how can we show you know a different world didn't has been shown in the Lord of the Rings or in D&D or you know in every other game that's come out and so that's what we built our lore around we've got the four base base races
Four parent races yeah
And those split into eight different archetype or eight different sub-races and each of them has their own story their own lore in their own look so you can play a dwarf that's kind of traditional or you can kind of go outside and play a dwarf that's totally non-traditional
With a ukulele
With a ukulele so we're doing some really I think interesting things with the sub-races to kind of make things more interesting and more fantastic you're not going to see the same traditional things that you've seen in other games even though they're all using similar terms
Right I I think the important part of why high fantasy why fantasy since it's been done so often well it's been done so often because it strikes at a certain part of everyone's heart that's in the MMORPG community because is you know it brings back memories of that first love you had in the MMORPG genre and you know it's it's an exciting story to tell a tale of a world that exists with these gods and and elves and even dwarves whatever it orcs we have a lot of extensive story and lore behind the game because it's a very important part for us here that that players know their role in the world they know what what what options they have that lie in front of them and how those options have meaning when they make a choice and how it reflects on on the history of this game and and and what it's all about
All right so uh what makes your dwarf different than Gimli?
Well Gimli is good over short distances
We're not going to talk about that [laughter]
They are going to be very strong
All right so let's dive into the node system because that's probably I want to say from my perspective one of the most unique systems that you've you've you're selling right now for the game so how does it work with the map you know how does that become the focal point that players and then possibly guilds and other social systems build around these nodes?
Well we've definitely touched a lot on our nodes in the past and we've released actually two parts of a four part node series because it is such an important aspect of the game it is the backbone of our of our worlds structure and and and it's one that allows for players to exercise the most agency over the direction of boasts that both their personal narrative and the overarching narrative of the world you know just to give a very brief overview cuz we have touched on this before so many times the the nodes are are are important based on location and they lock out other nodes as they advance in the world so it creates a scarcity it also it also creates a citizenship system where players will pledge their citizenship to certain nodes and it won't be a whimsical citizenship that they'll be able to change on the fly you know it's something that's going to involve a fairly tangible cooldown period if they want to switch their citizenships they also have to have a home in order to have citizenship nodes are going to to unlock content content that specifically relates to the location and development stage of the node it's going to be a different feeling for the players they're going to experience a more linear timeline within the game's story that you're going to have events in history that that is experienced by the player base you know if they were present a time ago when this node was fought over and destroyed or when it was built and they owned a home at the beginning stages of it now it's as vast metropolis you know it kind of it kind of redefines what the players will experience in an MMORPG to come into a wilderness that is devoid of really any structure outside of what the community creates themselves and then what can be created can be changed if they want to experience a storyline that's been seen on another server but you know you're fighting a dragon because you're near a mountain and then other servers fighting a Kraken because they're near the coast and and you want to fight that Kraken because of its drop table if you want to meta it or because you just want that under your belt to be the server first to take out that Kraken and you have yet to develop the node there you know it's a incumbent upon you to to manifest that in the game
Alright well I did do a little research about the nodes before I came in and asked you the question I thought that you might be like yeah we talk a lot about it and I totally understand
It's not me I could talk all day long about it it's everyone who's on Twitch because I know they've heard it a hundred times [cross-talk]
I get it I get it so but I do have an original take on that so you did mention that nodes are gonna be better at certain things from start create a competitive advantage for people to want to move and not be on one side of the world to go to the other or switch allegiances so whereas you know you're looking at as a competitive advantage MMO players are like I want everything you know I don't like to share or if he's got it I'm jealous I want it too so while you're like that's a competitive advantage the other person that doesn't have that competitive advantage is like this is an inherent imbalance in the system how do you address that crowd that's gonna be full of piss and vinegar and be like well I can't have it it's unfair and it's unbalanced?
I mean players can't have everything
Right I mean it's like you know that's the pervasive nature of today's kind of teaching aspect is like you get an award even if you came in last place it's a say it's like the same thing here risk vs. opportunity should be a paramount central focus of any system because it helps you to realize and and treasure that reward when you receive it right
Yeah and in this game in order to get anything you have to give something up
Right
And and that's going to be the case throughout the whole thing I'm a really strong believer that if you set out a system for players and and that system is self-contained and that system is complete then players will play the game with those rules in mind right it's it's not that we are Everquest II to you know ten years down the line and everybody wants everything you know we're starting out from these base foundations and I think that once players arrive and see how everything works figure out what the rules are I think that they're going to enjoy it I don't have an answer directly for the competitive advantage part because that's a core game conceit I think also like as things develop kind of there's a all ships rise mentality with it where you know as things continue to get more complex on the server everybody's going to have more opportunities so I don't think that you know just because one node has a lot it's going to mean that other players have fewer opportunities
Right
I think they're going to have more opportunity overall
I'd push back on the idea that competitive advantage means that someone else is locked out from something because really it's about someone else or a group of other people choosing to be more efficient at something through the path that they've chosen right it's not necessarily that someone else on the other side of the world that has a different node that's focused on something else can't do that thing it's just that they're maybe they're less efficient and that's how you know when we imagine it that's how the market kind of flows [cross-talk]
Or they're doing something totally different
Right
Right
Right yeah
Right and sometimes people with competitive advantage in a certain sector they give up being at battles in another one right and that opens a hole for those people to take advantage of that for sure and move into that space another thing is that it's important to note that as Jeffrey was saying as a node develops it's not locking people out from participating in the content there right I mean that's that's opening content everyone on the server yes there are mutually exclusive benefits for citizens of that node but in general people who are not citizens are still gathering some type of content interaction services ability to explore new parts of the game because of that node being advanced
Right
Yeah
Okay I actually took that when I first read it or listen to it that mean that certain nodes would be able to be developed differently than other nodes and they would have initially a competitive advantage depending on where they were in the world so I guess that might've been a misunderstanding on my part and thanks for clearing that up however you did here Steven say not everybody can have everything and it's ok deal with it
I'm a hundred percent a big promoter of that I think that that when when when something is kept from you and it is behind a wall of effort and and and drive and and a time sink that thing that's behind that wall becomes more precious so
You're absolutely right choices you know people should be rewarded based upon the effort they put in and it's it's the same way in life and it is that way in games and if people don't want that in their game there's plenty other games they can play that aren't like that so
That's another that's another great point is there's a lot of there's a lot of you know games out there we're being very open and honest with with what our game's going to feel like and if you're the type of player who wants to have everything without effort you know that's probably not going to be a match
I mean there's different levels of effort there's different types of rewards absolutely you know and I don't think I don't think any single player no matter how much effort they are are going to put out is going to have everything
Right
I don't think that's just going to be possible [cross-talk] you know and that's part of part of discovery part of having a place in the world part of you know having your own story is not only what you have but also what you don't have
Right
And I think that's totally fair and I think that's you know as long as everybody goes into the game with that expectation in mind it's going to be fun
Yes
Ok so you mentioned that the world is fresh at the beginning and the nodes are unadvanced and you kind of you know I don't know exactly how you a spawn in the world but let's say you pop up and you're this fresh new pasture and everything's beautiful and you're wandering around what's my motivation to set up shop and try and build a house and expand my node as opposed to just being a wanderer and looking around and enjoying the sights?
That's totally possible
You can be a wanderer
We've played out some of these and kind of gamed them out you know there's there's a bunch of different types of players right and I totally am that guy who once I log onto to ashes of Creation if I hadn't been a designer on it that's what I would do is I would be trying to find what other people haven't found and that's probably what I would be doing a lot of my first initial gameplay for other people they're going to want to hang out with you know other people who are [cross-talk]
This was a big part of the discussion that we had a few months ago yeah we're talking about like the exploritative side of if I don't want to participate in this early settlement development as a new player can I go out into the world and just explore as a new player?
And the answer is yes like this that's totally should be an achievable thing for people if that's what they want to do and I think that's a beautiful thing you know I think the the discovery aspect is is a part that I enjoy most out of MMOs but I understand there's other people too
And for me personally I'm more of a civilization builder
Right
I would love to get into the game and immediately part be a part of some community that's building up a node and partake in what all that node has to offer whereas you will go off into the wilderness by lion or something like yeah
We really tried to focus on just general player motivations I mean we've tried to create a path for all of those different motivations like the Explorer like kind of the investor of civilization or beginning you know get in type guy so we've tried to you know run the gauntlet that idea
There's a lot of different progression paths as well
Yeah okay
So and and also I guess sorry but but for the initial experience there's going to be kind of a ramp up time you're not gonna start in the middle of nowhere you're gonna start by one of our portals and there's gonna be kind of a gentle introduction to all different kind of mechanics that exist in the game is sort of a short form so that you get a feel for what's happening on and what things you enjoy what things you don't enjoy so it's not gonna be like you're in the middle of a field but there'll be a little there'll be a little bit of direction of the beginning
All right so you mentioned there's different play styles and people like different things one's a wander lust some are happy home builders what if I'm a happy home builder I'm improving my node and I don't I want to build a civilization I don't want to risk my civilization that I'm spending all this time and being destroyed do you have different rule sets for the different servers is everything gonna be PvP based how does that work?
Well everything's not PvP base but there are no different rules for different servers there's no PvE server PvP server [cross-talk]
Yeah just wouldn't work without a PV [cross-talk]
Yeah everything in the game works around some central pillars that we kind of discussed in the Kickstarter video and one of those pillars outside of the node pillar is the meaningful conflict pillar and and that houses the PvP systems that relate to how you can catalyze change in the world so everything would just become stagnant if you could just build up you know anything and then at some point it would just be you know that's the world when when you involve scarcity and you involve conflict that's when players who have different interests can exercise those interests in the world and sometimes that may involve what you have built or done and that's okay it's okay to do that because again that's the risk versus reward relationship when when say for instance you've dedicated time towards building a node and other players have dedicated that equivalent time towards sieging the node there's going to be a pitched battle between those players and and it's going to be
Because they both care about what's happening
Exactly they spend that time doing this because they care passionately about having access to that content whether it be the siege or the defense or owning the home but it is important to note however that when you create a homestead so to speak
A freehold
Excuse me I'm sorry did I say homestead why did I say homestead?
Playing too much ESO
Right exactly when you create a freehold that there's going to be an initial cost assessment for creating that freehold and then if that freehold gets destroyed replacing it somewhere else will not involve that initial heavy cost because we understand that change is a component in the game and you're going to be seeing these sieges occur and we understand that that may involve losing out on your freehold you'll be able to place that elsewhere in a new node as a new citizen somewhere
Okay so going from the macro down to the micro I know that my nodes gonna be at risk and but caravans are also part of the economy too let's say they were out protecting a trade route do I have to worry about Joe Schmuckatelli coming up and ganking me in the back and trying to steal what's on my caravan or is that is that one of those other risk versus reward type deals?
So he's not going to steal necessarily what's on your caravan and instead it's going to be as your caravan moves and again we've touched on this before but I'll go quickly as an overview as your caravan moves throughout the world that's going to have a static proximity zone around it that's going to to prompt a user with an interface that says attack defend or ignore basically and players can choose to participate in that that that caravan inst- that caravan grounds as either an attacker or defender the caravan itself will have a varying degree of hit points and defense stats and speed and things that the players will be able to adjust and customize as well as hire guards and they're going to have to destroy that caravan with you defending it first
Hopefully with your friends
Hopefully with your friends and/or with other defenders and if they manage to destroy this this you know strong caravan then there'll be a wreckage there that will have a portion of the goods inside that attackers can partake from
okay
Yeah it's moving moving goods around like that en mass because when we're talking about a caravan we're talking about a pretty sizable amount of goods that that act should have some weight and that's that's part of that I don't think Joe Schmoe singular is going to necessarily be able to gank that you would have to have Joe Schmo and his buddies
Okay
And the the the intention is that this is a group kind of size in skirmish or encounter
Right
So other than that are you at risk just basically anytime you're on the world from other players?
Definitely
Okay
Yeah so I mean that we we have a flagging mechanic and the flagging mechanic allows for non-combatants combatants and corrupt players typically you're not going to see players likely ganking very often in the sense that they murder you because the corruption mechanic is a fairly meaty deterrent
Yeah
To that but you will potentially see players participating in PvP and and I think the flagging mechanic is going to be a healthy system to deter murder but incentivizing pvp and it's obviously system that we're going to be testing in alphas and betas too so
Okay well for those that are D&D fans they will know the term murder hobo and sometimes people want to watch the world burn and kill everything they can so if you [cross-talk]
I don't think murder hobo is going to have that much success with it the the corruption mechanic is strong enough that if that's all you're doing you're not going to have a fun time
Right so the more corruption you gain the less effective you become in PvP and there's going to be a certain period at which point you have gained enough corruption that you're gonna be gearless and and you're also going to have like a massive reduction in your PvP efficacy
For you to want to murder hobo you're going to [laughter] there's you're going to want to like there's going to you're going to need to get something out of it right and for the most part if me if I go and kill Steve I'm not going to gain a lot out of it to really offset the the risk that corruption entails
Why you gotta kill me
Just as an example
Unbelievable
I'm not saying there's anything
Don't bother coming to work tomorrow [laughter]
I think we better call HR on that one
The intention is that the the risk has to be worth the reward right so if I'm going to go kill somebody randomly that's probably not gonna be enough for me there's got to be something at stake there for that to be meaningful for me and so that's I think that's how we're how we're disincentivizing the murder hobo for the most part
Absolutely
okay
Not to say it's not gonna happen
But I think I think with the time constraints we got time for one more and I want to shift [cross-talk]
Oh my god
I can't believe it's that late
Yeah it happens go from again macro keep it on a micro level we talked about the nodes and the building of the civilizations let's get down to like crafting on the individual level what is there available like I'm looking right now at a ranger who's got a bow and a cloak and all that stuff is that all that going to be able to be made by me?
Well it depends on how much you invest in your artisan class
Yeah it'll be made by you or another crafter or [cross-talk]
You will not have the ability to make everything
Yeah
Okay
You you will have to to focus within certain professions of certain paths in the artists entry and you'll need to rely on gatherers processors and item creators whichever one you've decided to go down you're gonna have to rely on the other two in order to bring about a full-fledged item so to speak
Okay so you're not gonna be a once it's that can be one size fits all where I go out and I gather it at all I come back I smelt it all I craft it all and then I get to wear it?
Right no there's gonna be a dependency on other players and in the direction that they've gone in and the role of their artisan in class it's kind of like taking the the classic Trinity system of adventuring classes and moving it over into an artisan tree that that kind of has a dependency on different roles within that crafting system
You said Trinity so I got a we're gonna make two points is Trinity there in the PvE portion of the game?
So not in a in a traditional sense of what a Trinity is for the adventuring class there are obviously going to be roles and there's going to be dials on your class of customization that can can make that role split higher and you have customization over where your character lands in that tree but there I mean will you need
A tank healer and DPS
Right exactly and and to a sense I mean yes
You know but we're pretty much designing towards that [cross-talk]
Right but not in a traditional sense right
Yeah
There's a with our secondary class system and being able to incorporate flavors of the different archetypes you're going to be able to take a non-traditional DPS and maybe move it into a tank sector or maybe move it into kind of a self-heal sector or or something along those lines but
We want people to build parties like they build their character where where you know there are interesting combinations to be had we don't necessarily know what all those combinations will be
You have a constraint on the size yet have you figured out what the party size will be?
We're looking at eight but that that may change so it's something that is still fairly firm but not totally solid
I mean a lot of this you know we plan to heavily utilize our testing phases of alphas and betas to to to bring a lot of these design discussions into a working environment and see exactly how they feel
Yeah the players who get into our alphas and betas will probably see some weird stuff so I'm kind of excited [laughter]
All right well thanks for having me on to pepper you guys with a bunch of questions for the last 45 50 minutes
Thanks for being here man
Absolutely thank you very much for coming and joining us Robert we really appreciate you had awesome questions
You're welcome and uh best of luck to you guys in the rest of your campaign and I hope you guys get all the money you need
Thank you [cross-talk]
Appreciate it
Take care Robert
Take care
All right so we have some questions from the community from our forums I believe do we know or no?
We do
Okay cool let's see what our first question is Oh we're upgrading our forums for all of you on Twitch just so you're aware I know that it has been a a source of of interesting discussion and you will see us in our new forums relatively soon I'm looking over at Jennifer
She's nodding her head [cross-talk]
An amazing community moderator ah excuse me community manager community manager and she is shaking her head big time big yes
Okay we good?
Okay we're good
So first question is from heartnna or HeartAnna not sure but sorry how short can each race be? so basically is there a scale or a lever to make you you know this tall?
There is there are floors and ceilings to each race our shortest race right now is 3 and a half feet I think
Really?
I can't confirm right now
Probably around three I mean three a half average
Yeah
Then you can have some
Up and down
Yeah so yes there is going to be room to adjust height but it is going to be within a [cross-talk]
A bounds
Right a bounds yes you can't be Groot
You can't be Groot unfortunately [cross-talk]
Baby Groot big groot maybe
Big Groot maybe no big groot was pretty big
Next one is Hammer will there be Telegraphs on the ground for combat?
The answer that is probably in very certain specific [cross-talk]
Templates [cross-talk]
Right [cross-talk]
So templates
In in really specific circumstances there will be when there's no other way for us to communicate something that's happening that you should know about that's what will default to [cross-talk]
And it's not going to be everywhere but there will be occurrences of it as you said
Yeah
The reason for that is because we want players to to have a blend of both experience right and and gaining knowledge through experience as well as you know having some skill reactions towards seeing those pop up
It's all it's all about communication on the side of the mobs to their players and making sure that those are clear
Well it will definitely be I mean we've discussed animation telegraphs you know in case they don't just mean templates
Right that's a good point
Do you want to read them from up there or do you
Sure yeah
Senuriac react Sanuriyak will players be able to do all professions themselves if they want?
No
No we we answered this I think you're going to to focus on certain professions and your advancement within those professions
Well okay so if you wanted to do all the professions you could do that [cross-talk]
But not be master of [cross-talk]
But not be a master of them there would you would be giving something up in order to do that
Right
So yeah
Driz what kind of representations will guilds have for on player identifiers such as name of guild next to players name guild Tabards guild coats guild mounts barding etc? a lot all of the above
All of those things are things we were planning and doing [laughter]
Yeah
Yeah
Yes we will answer to that yes NavaraKP will players be able to earn monster tokens in-game or will they be cash shop only? hmm they will be available in-game through rare drops but also in the cash shop
Yes
Primarily it'll be through the cash shop and then there'll be opportunities in game
Right and and the important aspect of that in regards to the cash shop is that again the the monster coin system relates to cosmetic rewards for succeeding in certain objectives and that's why we're comfortable with that SevenKiln no Kiln how will Guild Wars work? it's a good question Kiln so that's something obviously that we're gonna be testing in alphas and betas because we have a few iterations of how we would like to see Guild Wars work and we'd like to see which works best but it will likely involve a declaration period on behalf of the of the guild that is declaring war as well as objective based components to the war system itself and a surrender mechanic on behalf of the guild that has been declared upon those are probably going to be some pretty solid aspects of the guild war system that we can say are included in any of the iterations
Skullhead 51 will quest givers have some kind of marking on them to let players know that they have a quest to give out or will players have to figure it out on their own? will we see giant question marks littered throughout the world?
Will there be exclamation marks ever telling you where to turn?
With a huge arrow on the ground leading in the direction that you must walk
I will just have the game play it for myself and then I will win [laughter]
No
Yeah
If that wasn't clear enough
There's obviously going to be ways that players will come across the knowledge that there's something to be done in an area
Yeah
You know you're going to see see that user interface
Okay this is an active area guys might one check it out that sort of thing [cross-talk]
Exactly but it's going to be more subtle it's not going to be [cross-talk]
Yeah we don't want to hold your hand yeah we think there's a lot of missed opportunities in the way things are currently designed and we can make it better
Veradis regarding animal husbandry will there be aspects of genetics will there be hidden stats etc that can be bred? so the cool thing about animal husbandry is that you know it involves a tree of its own that players get to discover via what pairings they choose and stuff like that yeah and I think that's gonna be a pretty fun aspect of creating rare mounts that haven't been seen in the world and stuff like that so yeah I guess yes there's a form of genetics there yeah
It's it's probably not gonna be as you know complex as genetics [cross-talk]
Will you have a microscope? [cross-talk]
Are you going to draw out the chart? [cross-talk]
Dominant and recessive traits we may not have that [cross-talk]
Gene splicing
Very advanced for a freehold
Well technically they gene-spliced like in 2000 BC with certain forms a wheat right?
Yes
They didn't know they were doing that
Phil Slendy will there be diverse gender options for character customization for instance can a player be feminine or masculine with their clothing body type even if they are of a different gender?
That's an interesting question I think that
I mean you ever have a character creations like set up so
Right
Theoretically
Absolutely yeah
You could gear your character that way right as far as the sliders go right so
In choosing certain physical traits
Right
Right yes so there absolutely our our character customization points in the character creation setting that you can customize like you know your brow height and your your chin and hair and body type and stuff like that and I guess you could go towards a more feminine appearance as opposed to masculine appearance and kind of like body structure yeah that's that's doable
Scriptchaz how long does it take to siege a node after you declare to siege it that's a good question Script so once a siege is declared there will be a declaration period to alert the citizens that a siege is impending and that declaration period is dependent on the stage that a node is at so a village stage may see somewhere around a day declaration period whereas a town may be two a city may be 3 a metropolis may be four days allowing preparations to be had for people to come online and just be made aware that hey there's an impending siege once that siege declaration period is complete a siege will occur and that siege will likely take place over around a couple hours
Yeah
Yeah
And again these are all just preliminary times those will probably change as we tighten things up [cross-talk]
We will test them
Yes
Kabuki girl how interactive will furniture be in the game ie can you sit in a chair and lay a bed? yes I think so you'll be able to sit at a chair and lay in a bit
Yeah Funant will guild halls and be able to house more than one guild? is there like oh [cross-talk]
We don't have plans to do that currently
Is there like a what do they call those is a guild hall what do they call those common rooms that you visit when you go to like Europe and stuff? know what I'm talking about?
No
No wait hostel?
Hostel! will it be a guild hostel [laughter] that would be interesting
It would be interesting I mean I can sorta see I can sort of see the reason for it we haven't talked about it at all but
Probably not we'll see
Probably not we'd have to we'd have to find some compelling reasons
Yeah and that would kind of take away from like guild halls specifically
Right because we definitely have reasons for guilds to be inside of nodes so that would kind of dilute that a little so it's [cross-talk]
Yeah that's true ueaj that's probably you know
But it's interesting
Huber Huber my man how will Ashes deal with Zerg guilds that tend to dominate other MMOs?
We've spoken a little bit about this and in our previous streams we're very cognizant of the fact that we don't want to see zerging be a mechanic that's utilized by either guilds to accomplish content or just to steamroll over sieges and stuff like that so there are there specific mechanics that we are working on that will be seen through the testing phases that relate to a degree of understanding for certain systems that that can't just be overrun with numbers there will be specific activities and accomplishments relating to specific sizes of guilds and then also there's going to be a give-and-take for guilds that want to see a larger number of members as opposed to a more focused group that may be a part of an alliance so to speak so
I that's part of the reason why I like we want players to have a lot of skin in the game so to speak right like they have a lot of incentives to defend themselves they have a lot of incentive to combat the zerg and since there's so much connectivity in the world you know it links you with other people that you might not even necessarily know
Right
To come to the same defense
Maven one of our community moderators will there be in-chat role-playing features such as custom emotes dice rolling etc?
Yes
Yes absolutely I think as a matter of fact don't we have a custom emote package on the Kickstarter
Oh emoji yeah
Emoji yeah custom emoji package cool all right well that's all of our questions from the forums everyone out there we have ten days remaining in our Kickstarter so keep doing an amazing job and spreading the word for everyone that you know we're all very excited about Ashes of Creation and and the amazing support that you guys have shown us and we're going to continue these streams up until the end of the Kickstarter at which point we'll be doing them twice a month keeping you guys updated with activities and and accomplishments that we've done from a development standpoint
Taking questions from you guys
Absolutely
And holy crap number one MMO on Kickstarter come on that's amazing
Congratulations everybody again thank you all and we will see you on Wednesday have a good day guys
Thanks everybody