Talk:2017-09-06 - Jason Wivart - Ashes of Creation @ PAX West 2017 combat Q&A

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Jason Wivart: What's up guys we're here with Steven Sharif is that how you pronounce it?

Steven Sharif: Steven Sharif.

Jason Wivart: Creator, developer just the god of Ashes of Creation over here. I mean I'm living vicariously through this man right here. I've got more money in this game than any other game ever before. My wife is talking to kill me, but she knows I mean uh you're doing what all every gamer I think wants to do, which is make a MMO. Because there's so many games out there that just don't get it right and like it's so frustrating!

Steven Sharif: I one hundred percent agree with you like my entire beginning before I even got into Intrepid Studios who created Ashes of Creation was I was sitting there behind the computer frustrated thinking of myself why are they doing this? Why don't they do this? And I just finally got so fed up and I have the ability to do it myself that I decided to do that.

Jason Wivart: That's like I said everybody's dream. I'm sure if you're watching this you probably had that dream too, like I can do it better! So we're gonna find out here and they have done an amazing job. You were telling me earlier that just in three months you built the entire PAX demo: All that content, all the animations, everything. Just three months guys he built this whole thing. That I mean, that is insane.

Steven Sharif: Our team worked really hard over the past 90 days kind of really building this PAX demo: Both the arena and the open world experience. Yes we've technically been in production since February 2016, however a lot of that was getting the design architecture worked on, but not a lot of the code was in yet right. And we just kind of started putting that stuff in just after our Kickstarter because we knew we wanted to make a hard push for PAX to kind of display here. Look we're not your average Kickstarter game. We are here actually showing you something that is playable and fun and gives you a pretty good taste of what game's gonna be like.

Jason Wivart: Yeah no question about it like I've demoed the game it is fun it is a lot of fun. I did the PvE experience I haven't dipped my feet into the PvP yet but I'm sure it's gonna be a blast. I have heard and seen some of the reviews online from Twitter, Reddits, Discord all there. It seems like though the online feedback is a little more negative. Where's you talk to people here it seems almost all positive, so I think it may be something you have to actually get your hands on actually feel.

Steven Sharif: It is absolutely I mean here's the big thing about a pre-alpha experience I mean this is an entirely iterative process, meaning we're going to go through many different changes as we bring it out to alpha and beta and big part of making a quicktime event or combat kind of situation more fluidic and comfortable is that UI aspect right? I mean we don't want people looking down on the screen or anything like that away from the visuals of the game, so we're gonna have a highly customizable way that players can move around each individual element of the UI; they can change it from a bar to a circle; they could basically make it the way that they want to appeal good with it. Obviously we're going to take into account feedback, but honestly, from here everyone has been extremely positive with this combat system, with the world, with the graphics and with the characters and the skills that are being played. It's been awesome.

Jason Wivart: Yeah I was shocked to see some of the skills and the animation that came up and I delegate, I was disappointed with how the cleric held their little their staff thing. I was like dude that sucks. A free alpha I cannot complain and then I mean that is just stunning.

Steven Sharif: Thank you.

Jason Wivart: So let's watch, so I'm a huge economy kind of familiar with that. I love economies and markets, so to my knowledge these economies are all going to be kind of local things. There's not going to be a global auction house or anything like that?

Steven Sharif: That is correct. There's no global auction house. There's no global warehouse. Markets exist locally. They're regionalized. You have to transit goods from region to region if you want to craft something in region A, it's likely going to require a resources from region C; and you're gonna have to move it through region B to get there and that's gonna be risky we want this game that have risk versus reward. You know, we want people to actually cherish and have satisfaction with their rewards you know what I mean. So, it should be risky.

Jason Wivart: That's awesome. Have you thought about the whole like mailing things? Does that bring like, if it's a local economy you really can't do just like instant mailing of items. Is that something you're thinking of just like axing and kind like no mailing?

Steven Sharif: Because we're regionalized there's not gonna be any mailing of items.

Jason Wivart: Yeah because you sit alts in different towns, right and mail mail mail mail and kind of get around the whole system. So good news guys he's thought of that. He knows! I explained everything-

Steven Sharif: Oh my god I forgot about that!

Jason Wivart: And then specifically to another question I was concerned about, is like so, for example on the nodes, you roughly know how many nodes the world's going to have?

Steven Sharif: I can't tell you that right now, not yet. Okay so I mean obviously we have a number in our head we're going to be building some alphas and betas with that number in mind but the scope of the project with regards to the size of the map and the amount of nodes that are going to be present we want to aim for around an eight thousand person from current user base on a per-server basis; and we're gonna have to play with some of those numbers.

Jason Wivart: Okay so I mean I get so kind of get into this question. So think of nodes as like states guys from the United States. If you're in say California what reason is it going to be for me to go to New York and like interact with that node over there, since I mean obviously there's going to be trade routes between kind of semi-local ones, but what's going to make me want to go to like super far off to a different node?

Steven Sharif: So each node is going to have its own types of services basically and those services are going to be dependent on a few things: One, the stage that it's advanced to; Two, the type of node there is - there's four types of nodes; The decisions that the local player government has made with regards to offering certain services; and the affiliation that it has with different nodes. Nodes can have affiliations: They can be allies, they can be enemies, they can be neutral to each other; and that type of affiliation will unlock certain services that are available to the citizen of the node that has the affiliation in sister nodes, in other nodes. So it's going to incentivize you to kind of move throughout the world to interact with different places because you're going to have that option of quest lining through your citizenship of what node you are part of.

Jason Wivart: Okay so you're saying there's probably gonna be quests taking you way across the world.

Steven Sharif: And nodes are interconnected in that sense. Like when one node pops up somewhere and the city's there, it's going to have quest arcs that leads you to other nodes in the other places that pop up.

Jason Wivart: Okay, awesome 'cause I was kind of worried about that I'm like: Most people are gonna kind of get into a groove and like okay I live in California, I'm gonna build California up because I mean that's kind of what you do when you're building it up from the stages one, two, three, four, five all the way up the metropolis level; and like why leave? You know why go to something else? And that also leads into like expansions; and so you when you release new content of course you're gonna have to feed new questlines and the new things over there to get people interested in going over to the new areas that are unlock and everything.

Steven Sharif: Absolutely, yeah. There's going to be questlines that unlock relating to other nodes and that will take people across the world.

Jason Wivart: So I saw with the PvE experience here, there was a lot of like dialog with different options. Is that something that you're going to go back to? Because I know you're a huge like what is it D&D?

Steven Sharif: I'm a D&D pathfinder player absolutely yeah, yeah. I love story I love lore and I want story and lore to be a very integral part of your experience in Ashes of Creation. It's a factor of emergence right? Like that that kind of plays towards your immersion in the in the world. We just announced actually our composer is Bear McCreary who's an amazing composer. And when we include music and visuals and story together you can get lost in a world; and that's what I want people to do: Get lost in Ashes of Creation.

Jason Wivart: Yeah I mean it's just, it's so gorgeous you don't want to leave Ashes of Creation. Are you gonna have anything kind of like - I know some games have it like hey you've played for four hours, take a break? I think you're going to have do that.

Steven Sharif: That might be a legal requirement, I think so, yeah.

Jason Wivart: So any other big news out of the livestreams like today and yesterday, because I've been enjoying PAX to myself, I haven't heard what's going on here per-se/

Steven Sharif: Yeah, so we announced our composer Bear McCreary. We have our alpha zero date is December 15, 2017. So, this year we're able to pull it off; and our third announcement is the name of the world is Verra. We're going back to the planet Verra, which is your home world.

Jason Wivart: Okay, awesome. Wow, so alpha zero guys so make sure that you sign up on their website because you can get alpha zero completely free if you win the raffle, so make sure you sign up on their website. Nothing. All you need is email address. Do that guys! You're completely free to check that out. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see more. I'm just shocked and amazed that you were here at PAX already, like I've told some people that this does not feel like a Kickstarter at all. This feels like a AAA studio. Is that kind of what you're going for?

Steven Sharif: Well, that's really who I've hired. I hired people who are absolute veterans in the industry, that know what they're doing, who've been through the block on MMORPGs specifically; and you know we don't have that indie feel because we're people that have experience.

Jason Wivart: Yeah and like you definitely have the money to back it up too. Like you said something on the Kickstarter that resonated with a lot of people and I think a lot of people may have missed it: He's like, if this doesn't get released I will refund you your money.

Steven Sharif: Absolutely.

Jason Wivart: Just like, he's that rich? He's got that much money?

Steven Sharif: Well and the important thing about the crowdsourcing was that we did it not for funding, we did because we wanted community development and we wanted marketing and honestly-

Jason Wivart: It was all hype right?

Steven Sharif: It wasn't. I don't like to use the word hype.

Jason Wivart: It was hype!

Steven Sharif: Listen, when you're a brand new startup with a brand new IP, you need to get the word out there absolutely; and Kickstarter's one of those platforms, so it was just a no-brainer to go that way; and yeah you know the refund thing was: Kickstarter had a stigma and I wanted people to know that this isn't your average Kickstarter. We are somebody who has actually funded we're going to complete this project with your guys's help.

Jason Wivart: Okay one last question, combat. I know you said it's about 20% roughly feeling right now. Where do you see it going in the future? Do you think kind of like almost a fully polished version of combat in 2018 for like the Alpha and the Beta for like the Kickstarter?

Steven Sharif: I believe we will see it very close to complete combat product state of polish near the end of 2018. Yeah I believe we'll hit that.

Jason Wivart: A so like, what does it look like in your vision? Can you give us a more-

Steven Sharif: My combat that I want to see players have a choice in is when they're building out their skill tree they will be able to choose from more tab-target oriented skills, or from more action-oriented skills. You can tailor your experience as a player towards one or the other, because I know people kind of have a desire to do one or the other.

Jason Wivart: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Sharif: Or you can mix the two together. I want it to be strategic. I want it to require movement and situational awareness. I want combat to be fluid and comfortable.

Jason Wivart: So the time-to-kill - 'cause I know that some people it looks slow, looks sluggish; so the time-to-kill you're going to keep that pretty high?

Steven Sharif: I would say, it's not really high right now compared to a few games that I've played. It may get a little bit faster obviously part of being pre-alpha is developing those skills and trying to balance them very quickly without any iterative process or playtesting so to speak, right? I mean this is quite literally before our friends and family, so you know we kind of just ran with these numbers. I mean I made these numbers kind from my experience as a gamer and we just kind of put it into blueprints. So, you know it's working out okay. I might want it to be a little bit faster when it comes to kill times, but I think that's pretty close to what it-

Jason Wivart: But then keeping it like this allows a lot of strategic game-play.

Steven Sharif: Absolutely, yes.

Jason Wivart: I mean, that's one thing like I personally like it how it is, or even a little bit like higher time-to-kill, because it allows you to counter react. It's not like one shot, you're dead; or you got a lucky ciritical, you're dead. It's like it's more strategic. It's different. It's not just-

Steven Sharif: It's gonna stay around this feeling like when I was putting the numbers in, it was meant to be this amount of time. It might get a tiny bit faster but it looks pretty relatively going to stay-

Jason Wivart: And of course right now you're seeing a lot of game playing: People that have no idea what they're doing. I mean saying this is before the friends and family and I thought we were friends my friend but he has never let me play this before PAX. Come on!

Steven Sharif: I'm so sorry! We are friends. That's why you're here at the friend's and family.

Jason Wivart: All right thank you guys so much, Steven Sharif.

Steven Sharif: Thank you.

Jason Wivart: I will talk to you guys later. Thank you for your time. Good luck guys. I will follow this continuously and there'll be a lot of Ashes of Creation content here. I can't wait to show you more. Thank you guys.