Talk:2018-05-11 Ashen Forge - A Night with Steven Sharif

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0:45

[Music] Welcome everyone to the Ashen Forge episode 15 we have a very special guest with us today Mr. Steven Sharif joins us himself to answer some questions so Thank You Steven for joining us

Whoops sorry about that thank you for having me appreciate it I'm excited to to chat with you guys today I love watching your guys's show you always have very interesting theories and topics and discussions and I take a lot of pleasure in hearing the community you know theorycraft I think it's really cool

Oh yeah we definitely have a lot of passion about this game so we are all very much looking forward to it and we really do thank you for joining us so

Absolutely

1:35

And for people who have joined who have never watched us we do this every other week and I am Fantmx and I'm joined by Dygz and Legendary neuro and yeah so if you enjoy this show jump back and watch us in two weeks but anyways Dygz really set a lot of this up so I'm going to let him kind of take over because I know he has a lot of things I we all have a lot of questions but we're gonna start with Dygz and just kind of see where we end up so take it away

Yeah we we rant a lot on this show so I don't know I think just myself alone I have way too many questions to fit to an hour so I'm gonna start with some speed questions and I think I'm gonna try and run through most of mine because these should be fairly quick so we have to start with the ubiquitous Aggelos question which is when is nodes part three?

Oh my god right same same answer honestly it is it is something that we want to take our time with making sure that it is containing the information we want it to contain and it has the visuals to really show the difference between a year ago and today and the answer I can give you a soon soon trademarked I'm sorry

2:45

That's what I'm expecting but we have to ask anyway and I'll have some specific questions about nodes a little bit later so hopefully you'll be able to give us a little bit more detail but Seyoprayers from the forum's asked about the format for last names he's hoping that there will be a space in-between so he could have Seyo as his first name and Prayers as his last name instead of a hyphen or having this

So we are we're planning to have that information available on both the character sheet as well as on if you choose to show this on the website on your character website page as well however as a representation in the world above the character's head there will only be your character name which would technically be your first or last it's really up to you how you want to show it

3:37

Okay alright okay so I'm wondering because you said many times that you don't want Ashes of Creation to be a murder box so I'm wondering what are two examples of previous MMORPGs you would put in the murder box category so we have a better idea of what types of games you think of as murder boxes

Yeah that's a good question so I would say that that there was on occasion when I played Lineage 2 there was on occasion where it had the ability to be a murder box and the reason for that although it had it although it had a flagging system that was similar it did not have certain did not have certain safeguards in place for people creating these PK alts where basically you would level up a toon and then you would put worthless you know starter level gear on it and you would just log that tune in to go murder low level characters and you could do that all day long if you wanted what we have in place to kind of prohibit that type of interaction is that as you gain corruption which in Lineage it was of equivalent of Karma but as you gain corruption your battle efficacy diminishes for PvP only so eventually after a certain number of PKs your ability to kill other players will be diminished to the point of nearly impossible so that kind of safeguards that additionally it was possible for you to kill you know equal level players and low level players and you'd have a static Karma gain whereas with our flagging system the level disparity between you and those who you kill will grant you additional corruption very quickly so that also kind of prevents that murder box game style but I would say that you know generally I tend to stay away from murder box games so I'd have a difficult time kind of referencing what game I played in the past that I consider

How do you know you're staying away from a murder box game if you don't know which one it is so I guess like Eve is one for me well Eve is a murder box if you choose to go to the appropriate sectors right?

I don't know I stay away from Eve because it's too PvP centric for me so

Yeah sorry

Are you are you hoping Ashes will be at the same level of PvP as Eve or are you hoping for something different

Well no it is different right my hopes in regards to our battle is that it is meaningful so that means that it is a it is a decision on on behalf of the risk taker whether or not the reward were is worthy of the risk and then additionally as a player who might be on the receiving end of a PK they are aware that this choice of an opponent directly impacts them probably more than it impacts the death of their character and I think that there is a recourse for that character who got killed to go out and and pursue that murderer as well and exact their revenge and also to participate with other members of the community who are bounty hunters that will have an opportunity to locate in real time the position of that player on the map and that will sort of kind of limit the the ability of those those players to really go out and cause havoc

7:18

Okay so what was the other what about in comparison to Archeage?

Hold on one second hold on room sorry about that I don't know if you heard if you heard my studio the background somebody yelling I'm sorry say that question one more time

What about in comparison to Archeage what do you PvP in comparison to

Well Archeage there were really very little penalties applied to character deaths there was obviously there was a experience debt and you could the experience that was trivial because you would visit a Nui Shrine or whatever and pay a small gold amount that never really scaled with the development of the economy and then that was gone additionally as a faction based game so you were told who your opponents were you were told who your friends were and you had no choice over the matter you pretty much knew in any territory that you went to what the system of PvP mechanics were whether it was a peace zone or whether it was a PvP zone so if you were to take risks it was of your time and choosing depending on how you moved your packs and what zones you went through in order to move them so that really doesn't relate well to what Ashes is trying to do because ashens Ashes is a I say Ashen Forge Ashes is a open world and there are no zone flagged PvP areas instead there is just the flagging system that relates to the other players additionally there is a greater degree of risk on death and that includes the ability to drop material and resource goods now you can choose whether or not to carry those material and resource goods but thereby eliminating that risk but it is something that is present and and I think that another system with regards to PvP is that it's not all about the flagging system and the open world kind of dynamic it's about how guild wars are prevalent it's about how these node sieges can occur and the castle sieges in the and the fights for fortresses and I mean these these different systems all kind of place the the movement of goods and the caravans all kind of place a relevancy to the occurence of PvP so that something's at stake and it feels meaningful it is not just a I am told this person's my enemy they're on the enemy faction and I need to kill them because they are here no it is more of a decision on behalf of the players

9:53

Yes somebody was saying in the forums today that Oh caravans raiding caravans at max level is gonna become so boring you're just gonna be farming them and I was like the reason to attack caravans is not to farm the reason is that they're gonna be moving goods that will help them build up their defenses or they're gonna help them build up their siege engines and you need to stop them or

Absolutely

You're gonna be they're gonna be building up their node to they need these resources to make a metropolis and you don't want them to make a metropolis because you want yours to be the metropolis so we got a raid their Caravan right let's not the focus is not oh there is a care of in and I like PvP so I'm gonna go farm it's no I I but you might not even like me kind of what I like about Ashes is that it it has the potential to make myself who is a pacifist Care Bear fight because I want to get my metropolis built yeah and that's what I have to do I don't necessarily want to kill people but if I gotta kill people to get my metropolis well I might have to do that

And you may not be I mean there let's face it in games there are typically two types of PvPers there are the defenders and the ones that are kind of white knighty or they stand up for something and then there are the aggressors the ones who are either bandits pirates or they want to steal something you have right I mean that's typically there are some outliers but typically people fall into those two categories now for for you and you know not enjoying PvP necessarily just for the sake of PvP but if there's something that you have a vested interest in and you must perform in order to see that interest come to fruition that is where now you are involved intimately with the outcome of that story so turning PvP into a story is something that can be relatable by everyone whether you're a PvPer or PvEer or yes it's another story for you to participate in

11:51

Yeah and I'll have follow-up towards the end but I have a few more questions that I can get through really quickly and then I'm gonna turn that over to you guys yeah for a bit but what was my other one okay so someone asked are ships more like Archeage or more like BDO?

Honestly they're not really like either I know we haven't gone I mean there are obviously aspects of them that are similar to both but we haven't really gone into too much detail yet on the ships I know that we have our blog series that we're gonna be spooling up here I know it's been a while since I last blog but we've kind of accrued a few blogs that we'll release on a regular schedule to get us on a good schedule for but I know there's info there what I would say about our ship systems is that ships have their own class of vessel and the class that is related to the vessel has a certain purpose both in battle in PvE raids in transportation and all of those things are kind of unique in that sense I haven't seen it really done in another game before so those those classes of ships are going to be obviously things that people can build multiple types of they'll be able to to summon these ships that's similar to our cage right you can summon your ships up but you'll need to summon them from from land which means that if something happens to your Armada out at sea you won't have backups to just summon immediately in the middle of the fight again that means that again those encounters those battles are going to be meaningful if you eliminate your opponent their ability to out in the sea get back up and running again will not be capable they'll have to do so from shore somewhere from some port or harbor

13:39

Yes someone and I had a discussion about Zergs and it was mostly a semantics discussion but they couldn't grasp the concept of Zerg in being non-existent or really if existent difficult to do really well and Ashes because you can't gather people to the Zerg

That's absolutely correct that is absolutely correct so so part of part of what I've experienced in my MMO passt is that servers tend to devolve into a two-sided Zerg fest where you have you know or or if that's if they're lucky or you have it completely oppressed by one Zerg and they control everything right now you have to identify how Zergs work in order to know how to stop them from forming in a sense sure we can't keep players from forming organizations and alliances and relationships with each other and we don't want to do that they should be able to however the reachability of that Zerg throughout the server is diminished and Ashes because of the way that travel exists and what I just described about summoning ships out in the ocean is another form of travel being meaningful for those types of encounters where if a large armada does lose in that encounter they do not have the ability to port straight back out into the ocean or to resummon some of their ships right there they have to have decisively won a battle for them to continue to perform and they cannot just port at an instant's notice to the location of let's say a caravan or something along those lines they'll need information ahead of time in order to organize and rally and travel to that location

Yeah and I think with regard to caravans as I was saying in the forum's is that you know your ability but the caravan is moving so the ability of the Zerg to if it's far away you know you can't catch up to the caravan

Absolutely yes

You know you can't send out your alert hey we found a caravan and everybody come you know it's kind of gonna be local

15:41

So oh so you mentioned dropped resources and dropped corrupted gear-

Materials

I wanted to I wanted to clarify for us resources dropped resources can be looted right?

Correct

Okay but not the corrupted the corrupted gear when it drops is destroyed?

So there's so there's not really a sense of corrupted gear there is however corrupt players and if a player dies while corrupt they then have an opportunity to drop completed gear normal death which means dying while not corrupt you only have the opportunity to drop materials and resources however if you die while corrupt you could potentially drop a weapon a piece of armor something along those lines so it's an added risk yes those can be picked up as well

16:32

Okay all right cool all right and then my final question before I turn it over to the other guys is I'm I would like for you to explain a little bit how the Rangers abilities would work if they're using an axe or a sword or a hammer like you were doing in the PAX East demo like you know from what I saw there typically revolving around the bow

Ranged weapons right so basically on your character sheet you have the ability to equip a weapon for both hands and then a ranged weapon on your back so when you do a ranged ability it'll pull your weapons weapon out and use that ability and then you can switch back to your melee and shield or something along those lines so you basically you basically have three hand slots in the sense that you'll be carrying a ranged weapon and a melee if you choose and shield or two-handed melee

But but how does that happen because the way it seems set up now is that the first key is the weapon ability so you would have to toggle the weapon that weapon ability?

That's correct yes you would have to choose your active Q ability that is right so what you would do is you would set your main hand do I want my main hand to be my ranged weapon or do I want my main hand to be my melee weapon with regards to skill usage for example with the ranger if you have a range skill it'll automatically swap regardless of what your main weapon hand is but for the combat ability for the Auto Attack quote-unquote Auto Attack feature it would be your chosen weapon

18:05

Great okay guys jump in I can keep going

So the thing that I was wondering about you talked about stringent for you know attacking other players and you know the corruption all that but if I remember correctly you actually wanted some amount of players to be villains to be those bad guys to not to not have completely you know sunshine and rainbows but that there are people that are the agitators and so I wonder what are you going to do to support their added risk and reward them for for going down that path is there alternate advancement do they do they grow a posse get a camp etcetera as they go along in their in their villainy?

Well there are many systems that exist for villainy that do not need to tie into the flagging system the flagging system is a method for villains to be villains with added risk however villains can be villains without risk if they participate in those PvP encounters such as the sieging of cities or castles or caravans guild wars those types of things really we don't want to incentive incentivize griefing we don't want to incentivize PKing we do however want to incentivize meaningful PvP so I don't want to hand a carrot to a person that PKs someone out in the wilderness just for PKing them because ultimately what that should boil down to is whether or not this individual has weighed the opportunity over the risk enough to to warrant going against that that crime system that flagging system that corruption system yeah

19:51

Fair enough

So I could go forever on crafting I could probably pin this whole hour just on crafting one of the things that really pulled me into this and that I've talked about a lot with these guys is that I'm kind of past raiding for me personally I've done that I've been a raider and part of what's drawn

He's old he's over 30 and he's got kids [laughter]

Yes I feel old that is part of it I've grown up no part of what drew me here though was the idea of crafting and the role that that plays in the overall game that's why so I could go an hour you know I even created this whole backstory that I've talked to them about us some battle priest that gave up you know gave up the mace and decided to have a farm and that's really where I would see my role within this game is just trying to create some sort of farm so there's a lot of questions that kind of come from that one I don't think as far as I'm aware now I'm not an alpha zero there's nothing as far as crafting yet within a playable state correct?

That's correct we haven't implemented mainly we haven't implemented the the UI with regards to our crafting system there's some rudimentary crafting putting a few items together that can be found in the wild that's not present alpha zero but is on our internal testing however alpha zero was really a test for our networking stuff like that

21:16

Yeah and that's that's what is there a chance it will be in for alpha 1 or 0.5 I guess?

Yeah there are some systems that are currently being worked on for 0.5 yes

Cool awesome so I guess the two biggest I don't say concerns cuz I'm not really concerned but so when I create a character you know and I really have this this goal what soon as I login that's really all I want to do I now obviously they'll have to be some level of combat some level of PvP as Dygz was saying there you'll get pulled into things at some point but when I when I come in I guess my first thought is I really thought about creating the character that created a farm and that would encompass several things so the crafting structure that we've seen is sort of broken down and correct me if I'm wrong and to harvesting and then refining those materials and then crafting

Correct

22:03

So I imagine on a farm you know I would grow crops animal husbandry but you know from that too there would be maybe some cooking or some other things so I guess as far as I picture a farm is that would I be able to as a single player to do all of those things or and you know I realize things like maybe the equipment needed yeah I'll probably have to go buy that from someone else that you know I'm not going to be able to do everything and from what I understand you you can kind of do a little bit of a well a lot of things but you if you want to become a master you have to kind of go with just a couple

Focus

So so I guess is it possible as a single player to have a fully functional sort of farm setting on your own would be one question?

So you kind of touched on the phrase on your own because you did say that you believe you'd probably have to purchase things that perhaps you had not filled in the adventuring path for necessarily and that would be true I mean obviously the overall answer your question is yes you can have a farm on your own for the most part will you be able to do that by logging in you know at the very beginning of your characters creation no you know it's going to require some progression you're gonna have to gather supplies you're going to have to gather goods to barter with others in order to fill the gaps where you may not have either expertise or time that you've spent on collecting the necessary items for will you be able to collect basic blueprints will you be able to declare citizenship to a node so you can gather access to the freehold system or purchase a building with inside of a node yeah all of those things could theoretically be done by yourself I guess the question is the path of resistance if you're solely relying on yourself it may take longer if you are relying on a group of friends and a family it might be shorter if you're relying on a guild it might be even shorter if you're part of an healthy node where you have access to certain services that other players who are not citizens of a particular node that has progressed as far has access to it might be even shorter than that so the the the answer to your question is yes you can do that you can have a farm by yourself it is a matter of the path that you take will determine the time and rewards you receive for your your time spent

24:18

And that kind of touches on my other thought too was you know I some of the other interviews and things you've done kind of commenting on maybe you can harvest iron here but it's a different area that you'd have to go to actually process it and just sort of that new player you know if they come in with I'm going to be a crafter not a fighter I guess at what stage or what no you know where does the game have to be at to where you can actually log in and there's gonna be a lot that you like you said you have to do to get to that point but but where you can just actually within the game itself get a freehold and start you know that was another thing as someone just joining you know where they want to go straight to a larger area or could you know what's possible within a new player experience basically?

I just wanted to jump in real quick because it seems to me well village you would have to get to the village to get a freehold I think but it sounds like Steven was saying that you might want to pick what crops are nearby that you would want to focus on to begin with you might want to start thinking about what lower-level animals you want for your animal husbandry and you'd be working on that stuff while the node was building up to the village stage so that you could get your freehold that's what

So well sort of I mean yes that's sort of true with regards to how resources spawn in the world you know you're going to go out and you're going to explore you're going to adventure you will want to focus on a particular economy avenue okay so I mean I played a big economy game in many MMOs that I've always touched on and usually whenever there's a market for with supply and demand you're gonna take an approach at that market and your approach is going to include you know how can I kind of corner the supply end of one of these particular demands you know am I going to be the dude who gathers the flowers then or mines the ore or creates the alchemy components that builds up to the item you know you as an as an economist and a person who wants to corner a certain part of the market to kind of generate these goods or become a farmer of these things you need to approach it with a specific avenue in mind whoops it just sometimes it gets a little dark in here if there's nobody where did my lights go lights come back oh there we go perfect sorry it's probably not that bad if it goes off again but anyways you wanted to make an avenue so again when you're going out in the very beginning right yeah as a Dygz was saying you're kind of waiting for the nodes to form where does the village come into play and and what have you done until that time well you can go out and you can start your gathering profession right because in order to become a processor you must have land to work with you must have infrastructure so you can't really go down too far into the processing path until you've had that infrastructure set up so you're going to go out and you're gonna start to gather things you're going to start to mine things and you're gonna prep for when you can secure the land at the village stage and above and then the other thing is as a crafter you're going to want to know where certain recipes can be fulfilled where which nodes have the capability of creating what you've processed material that you've gathered for and then you're going to want to plan out your route to either transit the goods there or make sure that you're situated in the area so that you can go out collect and build in that area as well so there's a lot of planning that's going to be necessary on your end especially if you plan to go it alone as a player in order to to prepare you're basically approach to the economy

So many questions one more

But I have a question for you Fantmx because and what's your concept of alone is because it seems like you would want people to come to your farm

28:21

Well yeah as a sole owner of a farm unless and this was another question Steven I can high either hire you know a caravan will have people you can hire so could my farm hire people or can I share that with other players like can I give them permission to do things as a group per-se or because that's something I wasn't sure of either's is is it only I can create things or not?

No so a caravan can be given a caravan can transit goods for multiple players one caravan can and that is kind of a family or group dynamic that can be applied to the caravan so it can be a co-op Caravan and then with regards to access to certain services I think we have right now that's planned is to have a limited number of affiliations you can make with other accounts with other players sorry with other players that grants them a shared access to certain services that your freehold may offer or that your processing centers may have available

Good that's yeah that's why I said alone I didn't I don't plan to be completely alone in an MMO so one more thing before you you I know you want to jump in Dygz

No I wanted to remind you of something so but go ahead

29:38

I want to introduce a term and this is sort of one of my other questions sort of PvP crafting will we be able since since there is a element of villainy and and you know those sorts of things as a crafter you know can there be some player versus player within crafters so you know can I come in and sabotage someone else's work is that something that could ever be possible or

To a degree you can I mean if you if right now the way that it's set up is if you go and you lay down your freehold and set up your processing power with the different buildings on your freehold and someone comes and declares a siege against your node that that freehold is under if the siege is successful players can go throughout the land that that village had dominance over and destroy player built housing player built processing structures player built freeholds and in a sense let's say let's say you become the master crafter on the server and for the past you know three months on this server you're the only dude that can make the the Dragon bow and and you have the market on this legendary bow that's sought-after by like you know sixteen classes out there who really use this bow right you might choose not to sell this bow that you craft or work for certain people on the server who you don't like and those people might be upset with that and they may lead a campaign to siege the city in which you have placed your crafting base at or the city in which that bow is craftable at if they if they're successful then you've lost your ability to craft that bow until you build it up again and and that I guess is a way for PvP to kind of impact crafting it's one of the connections that makes the community style of an MMO interdependent with other communities you know yes you can be just a crafter but the world doesn't just go on and you're in your corner and nothing that happens there it doesn't matter to you it has it impacts you so you have a vested interest to to make sure that city doesn't fall to make sure your freehold isn't destroyed now while there's progression to get that freehold built in to build up this processing and for your for your crafting experience that is going to be a process we understand that there's going to be fluidity in how nodes exist they'll come one day and might be destroyed the next day we don't want you to have to repeat a tedious process to get that infrastructure built up again so once you've built it once it will be easier to build it again and you can save certain settings and furniture and placement so that it is a not a seamless process but it is a process that was not as difficult as having to achieve it the first time around

32:36

Fantmx you had a question I was supposed to ask Stephen it PAX West that I forgot and it's about selling something or do you remember what it is?

This was a question along this as a while back was actually asked to paksas ago yeah I just because I don't think we had ever clarified so things that are bought within the website in-game items those will never be tradable in the game or sellable in the game?

So I've had I mean I've had people ask me obviously about whether or not we can they can gift something to other players and my answer to that has been no and the reason why I don't want items that can be purchased cosmetic items that can be purchased from the marketplace to be transferable is because it is in a way a transfer of money for potentially something in-game let's say for example I have 500 gold in-game but I don't want to spend the $10 on a costume but I want the costume and you want to spend the $10 for my 500 gold and you spend the $10 and I give you the 500 gold and you give me the costume that is basically a buying gold and facilitated through the company now obviously there's gonna be gold sellers out there there's going to be badr's we're gonna make every possible effort we already have included in our base architecture for the game systems that track behavioral algorithms and and metrics from players to identify these accounts and ban them quickly and in addition we are a subscription-based game so you're not going to see that prevalent quickly made accounts to advertise and to try to sell and bot and all that kind of stuff because there will be a cost associated with doing that and that eliminates a large swath of percentage of botters and gold sellers out there if they can't make free-to-play accounts sorry lights come back to me

That is exactly the answer because that was the concern was just because I can remember at one point I don't play WoW anymore but at one point mount trading was like a huge way to earn once they introduced the card game right and you could get mounts outside of the game through the trading card game you could sell them within the game and it was just a way to sort of buy gold

Yeah absolutely I mean I think here's the important thing is that many games in the past have kind of moved to this place where they where they just don't care about this activity and that's the truth I mean they they don't want to devote the resources necessary to enforce either certain rules or you know they just the game isn't warranting they're added effort to to fix this condition however in my personal opinion as an MMORPG player the in-game economy is extremely important to maintain from a from a non disturbable point meaning you must limit as much as possible any outside interference on that economy in order to prevent the scales from being flipped you do not want interference and one of the things that I won't name the game but one of the things that I could not stand about a previous game that I did is there were objectives from a crafting and farming standpoint that you could you could set your focus to kind of achieving these particular items and it was a lot of invested time it was invested money you know your whole economy on on your avenue approach to the economy was built around a particular resource and the company came in and threw on the marketplace that resource basically at a certain dollar value now what did that do to the economy it completely threw into disarray every single crafter every single farmer all of the people guilds who had who had acquired farmland just to produce this resource their entire economy was thrown into disarray and now what does that do to your server population it causes people to quit which that is an influx of free gear given out to other people it is just a completely destabilizing force in the game so as much as we can keep that economy sanctified to only in-game activity that's what we want to do

37:10

I have a quick question related to fantmx's class stuff which is do artisan classes also dual class with augments?

Do artisan classes dual class with augments no they do not

Okay

I have a related question that too

They do however have professions within the artisan trees so in a sense I mean there there is progression there with regards to granting skills and abilities that don't pertain to adventuring class but do pertain to the crafting class

That's what I meant within the artisan class do they have something similar to the subclasses over in the

It was an idea with toy we toyed about like if you were a master you know animal husbandry person and also an alchemist like could you have some augment for your potions that apply only to pets and then maybe that potion could then be consumed by a pet to grant some speed bonus for a period of time and that's kind of an augment system since we already have the technology being produced for the adventuring class in that way it was a topic but it's not within our scope if we have the time to implement a design like that it is something that's on our backlog but right now we're trying to keep everything in the scope

38:25

You mentioned with bringing up augments and crafting I also had just quick question watching the last stream you all did talking about weapons and weapon progression with the weapons themselves I assume there'll be tools for crafting

Oh yes

To go out will they also have some sort of progression system as you get more powerful as a crafter will your equipment also somehow improve like can I use the same axe for copper I do for you know something much higher end or does that?

You cannot no tools do advance within the artisan tree so your ability to either gather process or craft will require the equivalent tools necessary at that stage of crafting in order to accomplish the task at hand so you could not mine copper and mithril with the same tool

39:17

Very cool you know there is a question that I had about the the the adventuring classes with the different subclasses being a thing and even without the sub classes is just just the eight classes as they are I had wondered what's what's the plan for combating flavor of the month flavor of the month skill combinations equipment combinations then even more specific at the higher levels sub class flavor of the months is there something that's going to be done more on a balanced side is it going to be more of an unseen hand where certain creatures in the world just respond to certain attacks differently over time so the flavor of the months eventually kind of get weeded out as the creatures kind of resist those abilities and and kind of counter them?

So our counter to the to the flavor term really comes down to how we're balancing these basic archetypes as well as the the realm in which the archetypes exist from a 64 class point of view as well we are approaching it with a cookie cookies excuse me not cookie cutter a rock-paper-scissors rock-paper-scissors kind of approach and we're also balancing it for for group play not 1v1 so in that sense you it's going to be it's I do not believe we're going to have a flavor of the month class will there be multiple flavors of the month that exist within those each rock-paper-scissor columns I suppose that is possible I guess from a balance standpoint you know I can say hey we want to make everything balanced obviously we want to make everything balanced now many designers have approached making something balanced and have walked away and it was very unbalanced and and the truth of the matter is it's very possible that our first approach to balance that's going to be the case our second approach to balance that's going to be the case but our objective is to make sure that within the different columns of rock paper and scissors that there is a healthy variety among the classes that have specificity and what they can accomplish and then it comes down to the players decision on play style how they want to impact the world that's our approach to balance we recognize that balance is one of the largest and most difficult issues to tackle from a game design not just inherent in MMOs although that's where it becomes most prevalent because you have a large number of players that are choosing between the options you provide but in any game design balancing something so that an option a choice does not need to be made for you but that you can make a choice is is obviously our objective

It seems to me though to if you have you know how people choose to use their augments whether the racial augments or class augments that you're picking up in the world right if if my if my dwarf fighter plays different than my elf fighter then you know my elf fighters not gonna be trying to be the cookie cutter build of the dwarf fighter

Absolutely

We don't play the same

Right I'm just gonna let the darkness happen so yeah hello darkness my old friend yes I think that that the important thing to remember is with the augment system there is a great degree of diversity among the classes and diversity possible among the classes and diversity is a producer of a way to get away from that kind of meta feel because it can directly relate to your feeling and experience of being within something as intimate as combat let's say or your role within a party so that's I mean obviously testing testing testing testing and testing is needed and that's what we intend to do it's why we started testing so early as well you know not just matter of that than the backend and the network but also you know as we implement different design features it's also a reason why are one of our first testing periods revolves around the arena PvP stuff you know castle sieges is because we want to get that dynamic present in the class system among groups versus groups and then from there you know it's funny because a lot of designs a lot of productions kind of leave PvP as an afterthought and that's why sometimes it's not as fun as well but from our perspective it's if you can accomplish something as difficult as balancing PvP then balancing PvE afterwards or not even afterwards but during that is is something that's going to be easier in our opinions so yeah I think I think balance is a very important part it's something we have a strong focus on and testing helps with that a lot

44:20

You mentioned castles and we had a question from chat about if you have multiple guilds working together to obtain the castle how is it determined which of those get to own it?

It's going to be the it's going to be the guild leader or his lieutenant that he chooses he can choose one which one of them seals finishes the cast on the final object which is either yeah go ahead

Right but if three guilds are working together how do you don't really have a guild you have three guild leaders at that point right right and then there's an opportunity there for perhaps backstabbing in the throne room where one guild is like yeah you know we agreed to get to this area but we had a change of heart in the middle of the battle who know I mean [cross-talk]

That is just you know when it was still in kickstarter I wrote an article about the stories and one of the things that always drives me to to Eve which I just never could get into because it's not my kind of game was the stories that came out of that and this is what you just mentioned is one of those things I just can't wait to see once everyone is in in playing it's just what comes out of this the stories that are gonna come out and that's just one point out that's something I just cannot wait

Think about it think about it like this Dygz you have earlier we talked about how we want to kind of stay away from zergs okay well the best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within right that typically is the result of most zergs falling apart right it's that it's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization right if we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality also so let's say for example we were to go into that siege together as you're guild leader and I'm a guild leader and you know we have neurotoxin as a guild leader and the three of us decide we want to go siege a castle well if we sign our agreement in blood beforehand and there's no opportunity for backstabbing at the time of this when it's most critical and most elevated testosterone and people are about to actually claim the prize well then that's not fun there's no opportunity there for division the division will have to occur in a less strenuous atmosphere where you know people can think rationally but if we approach the castle siege and we've destroyed the walls and we're in the throne room and we're about to cast on the penultimate thing and I at this time and just so excited from what's happening that I'm like screw it I'm gonna go for it it's gonna be mine I'm gonna take the taxes for the next month I'm gonna take all the gear from the castle I'm gonna take everything you know there's an opportunity for division to occur within those upper ups and we kind of want that at political intrigue to be present in the game

47:27

And then just to kind of quick tangential follow-up would each of us be able to like say we took turns owning the castle over that would be three months I guess would we be able to alter the effects that the castle has on the region

Yes absolutely yeah there there would be there are levers and dials that are present to the both the owners of castles as well as the elected officials of nodes that during their administration they have the ability to impact and influence the region around them

Yeah and what would that do for I don't know do that do the military nodes attached to the castle do they have NPCs and would those change to reflect the race of whoever's owning the castle at the time?

All nodes whether they're associated with a castle or associated with normal node structure has cultural influences that replicate over to the buildings that are produced in the NPC's that are present.

48:39

Right okay that's gonna start leading me into race questions let's see Neuro you have anything else you want to throw in there?

Oh no you guys are rolling along as well you have a whole lot of questions from chat so if we wanted to touch on some of those

I got I got do my race and identity thing so

Yeah you got it you got it man

Let me ask two quick questions and then I'll be done mods so will those be allowed you know like we have for say World of Warcraft is that something that's planned?

It is not planned we we will have a lot of customization present in the both from a UI perspective as well as different data points that will be naturally in the game but we don't want to open up the mod game just yet that might be a decision we change in the future but it's not planned release

49:37

And then lastly also and this was mentioned in chat which actually had a question too is was just sort of API structure and Twitch integration or just API into the game could I set up something to access kind of generic information from outside of the game that

Yeah so we will have integrations available for let's say streaming services like Twitch and a few other services as well but it's not something that we want to expose through an API just yet

50:05

Okay so I have a few questions so I guess I'll click and do them quickly before I get to my questions I really want to ask you so one is alts are our alts capable of being citizens of different nodes or different servers?

So your your account is bound to one declared citizenship per server which means that if you have two alts and your main character on one server you may only be a citizen of one node between those three and if you if you have an alts on a different server it could be a citizen of a node as well

50:47

Great okay and then right so because but but Freeholds specifically are locked one per account?

Correct

Right but but if you're saying that if I put an alt on a different server I could have like in node housing or like at least an instanced house

Correct yes

51:11

Yeah okay great that's what I was hoping for okay so let's see what so back to classes really quickly so is for example because this came in through the tank discussion topic is the Guardian generally such a super tank that it would be laughable for a knight's shield or spell shield to be the main tank in a top end raid or should any primary archetype subclass generally be viable as the main tank?

I would say any any primary tank is viable and absolutely not laughable from an upper end raid yeah absolutely

Okay great and then so my understanding was that secondary class augments are toned down versions of the primary class abilities and that secondary healers can only self heal so can you elaborate a little bit on how because I mean you've given examples like teleport and stuff like that but is it just the Paladin that will be able to only self heal or will there be other secondary healers who might be able to do stuff for the group?

Yeah so there are so when you pick the the cleric as a secondary class you gain the two of the augments are life and death basically and choosing life augments on certain skills will have the ability to both potentially impact others to a degree and and give them life giving benefits to a degree through your skills and also provide healing benefits for yourself through your skills as well so so there is there is pretty much any class that's going to choose cleric as as a secondary class will have the ability to pick from those augments to influence their skills to to affect the life of others around you and yourself

53:15

Okay and are these because you've said that they are we don't gain new skills so are these lesser versions of the primary abilities or?

It changes yeah changes the primary ability to some degree right depending on on how the the the I here a couple of guys are playing Friday Night Magic in the conference room and there's some I just heard one of them say no I'm gonna ask Steve I'm sure there's some rules question that they're asking okay sorry about that what was I totally got distracted by

Cleric secondary abilities and they will change the primary abilities to some degree

Okay yes they will they will change it to some degree and that degree depends on the augment that's applied to it right so yes you only get active skills from your primary class and that active skill could look totally different after an augment gets applied it really depends on what the augment is

54:18

Right okay all right so let's see so I have some node stuff I have some race stuff but it's mostly race and identity stuff that is affecting but I think so I think the first one I had is so what are the ramifications of node advancement with regard to race so when we advanced a node from say a stage from the town stage to the city stage could that potentially change based on race contribution so at the town stage it was an elf but now predominantly it's a

Yes could it could change cultural influence between the stages yes

Okay and then how do the ZOIs work when they spread out would would it be possible that if I have a city expand into a metropolis and let's say well let's say it's a Aggelos' City and he's got a a dwarf city that he's expanding into a metropolis and I've got an elf town nearby with that ZOI potentially engulf my elf town if it was close enough?

Yes it would it would so there's a few there's a few metrics that our node expansion programming adheres to a few rule sets right and and those rule sets kind of depend both on proximity they depend on a crude experience they depend on attrition and other node development rates in the world and that kind of determines this direction that basically think about like this ZOIs zones of influence are pretty much borders right there borders that's what they are and and that border can end up starting to look like a country a nation right and at the metropolis stage you're going to have one fifth of the world encompassed with your borders and what that means is there's gonna be many other nodes that exist as you expanded that you enslaved and I mean I don't mean enslaved from a slave standpoint I mean like you you there your vassal so to speak right and and that that forms this country that forms this nation

57:02

And then so because it's Aggelos and he hates elves I'm assuming he wouldn't want to alter that Elf town that became a part of his country now would he have

He wouldn't have the ability to impact any of the decisions within that node that becomes the vassal instead what happens is the parent node begins to take all the experience that is that is committed within that zones of influence that it's taken over so that's the first thing the second thing is it now takes a cut of all taxes all taxes from any of the housing that's present any of the services that occur there any of those things and it can change those tax levels and the tax level excuse me doesn't necessarily impact the individual citizen because that citizens tax levels determined by the city that they're part of but the city's take that gets taxed by the parent node

58:07

So what would happen if Aggelos decided he wanted to siege the town so that he can turn it into a dwarf

So there is there's what's called we call our affiliation tree right the affiliation tree starts at the you know well I don't necessarily want to say which starts because we're still determined that but there is guild affiliation there's party affiliation there's a raid affiliation alliance affiliation there's a citizenship affiliation there's society for affiliation there's religious affiliation all of these things have some hierarchy and within that hierarchy there's the ability to participate within certain systems so for example if you have a node that has fallen under your vassal state and you're a citizen of the parent node then you could participate in a siege against the vassal node but if you're a citizen of the vassal node you could not participate as an attacker against the parent node so there's there's a hierarchy unless you were to renounce your citizenship right then you can

And so what I'm gathering is that if Aggelos is the parent dwarf and he's overcome this Elf town and he hates Elves he could siege that

He could rise up and tell the other citizens of the other vassal states and the citizens of his own node these elves are in sedition to the king and and they must be eliminated come with me and we shall siege the city and raze it to the ground you know and have this whole you know what everyone I think Aggelos is a little RP oriented which is great but no I would say that yes that's possible absolutely

59:51

I know that five minutes but I'm going to keep going until Steven leaves [laughter] we've got five minutes go ahead

I was just we had five minutes like four and a half minutes ago so

I have a few more questions but go ahead

No I don't have any questions I was just saying where I know Stephen has another show to do later

1:00:19

We can I only have maybe ten more minutes so it's gonna be ten more minutes max but so what are my other race questions related to that though so well is there incentive to because you said you said previously that you want race to be an identity and you want that identity to matter and so it seems to me that they're just going to be other features tied to having a predominant race than just the architecture or just the cosmetics of an NPC it seems to me that the NPCs there they are meaningful in terms of the quests lines that come up tasks that come up the narrative of that town and also racial progression it seems to me like you might want to have an Nikua city or metropolis in order to reach your max racial progression

Right so race matters because narratives have paths that also are influenced based on the primary contributing culture to the node right and and within that node that has you know if you're a Nikua and you have you're in a Nikua node that's predominantly Nikua you're going to have certain services and/or abilities as a member of the Nikua race that other races may not have access to they may have alternates right they may have alternative quest lines but they won't have specific ones now those specific Nikua quests will then relate to the meta-narrative that's present in the world and they'll start to direct some of that meta-narrative and that'll be beneficial for your kind because it will unlock certain content for your race that other races haven't unlocked yet so there is an incentive there to to to see progression along that line now in order to curb the progress of a dominant race there is an attrition and that attrition on experience and influence is heightened based on the performance of the race in the world so if all these nodes are orc nodes then their attrition rate is very high to compete with the cultural establishment of new nodes because they have more influence in the world and and a popular opinion is against them in their outlying regions that there do not have influence in so there is attrition to kind of curb one from dominating the entire world to a degree

1:03:06

Yeah but I'm saying people will have incentive to say hey I want to siege this city because I need my Nikua I need a Nikua city in order to

Absolutely yeah

To move forward in my yeah

There's a lot of incentives

1:03:21

Okay and then so what I have to thank you for the way you're doing races there's no race wars you know and inherent in there I have been asking for Inuit dwarves or you know Asian dwarves or you know everything's always European so I'm liking that we don't have just primarily European dwarves and primarily European based elves and things like that

Yeah the Nikua have a nice a nice Polynesian kind of influence I think

Yeah and and then the Pyrian I hear might be based on Native Americans?

So we have we have the Pyrian elves which are the parent race the parent those were present during the fall

Right

Yeah we have the the Py'Rai and then we also have the Empyreans so the Empyreans are probably more closely stemming from a greco-roman feeling kind of imperialistic and then the Py'Rai have more of a Navajo Indian kind of influence native excuse me Native American kind of influence present

1:04:27

And then I'm glad to see that we got some non-european cosmetics and in this but within even within the human so typically we have a very we've gotten to a place where you have a very robust character creation so we can basically create ourselves if we want to but that doesn't always translate to the culture so like I seeing among the human costumes that I've seen so far they're still very European but I'm wondering you know I would maybe like to have an African or Middle Eastern or East Indian costumes or my human as wll

So it was very important when this was almost almost three years ago now where you know as I was detailing out the designs for the game and and the cultures I kind of began to take notes on which cultures had influences and I wanted to diversify those influences to represent all real world cultures to a degree so you will see in the different races that are available from a player character standpoint a lot of different influences that reflect many cultures in the world not just European not just Africa not Mesoamerican not you know these these cultures are going to be present in many of the races yeah

1:05:58

Great and then my last area I think is LGBTQ identity I'm wondering what your stance is on on that game I was in a discussion for EQ next 2014 someone was asking about supporting gender fluid identity I didn't even know what gender fluid identity was at the time so I was like yeah they were asking for pronouns and things like that and I said yeah I can see that for transgender like you want to have gender-neutral pronouns or something like that are there plans for supporting things like that in Ashes of Creation?

There are not plans for gender neutral neutral pronouns however our marriage system which will be present does not take into account gender so two individuals of any sex will be able to utilize the marriage system and we feel that that's pretty important to to really reflect the nature the cultures in Ashes of Creation that it does not have that conflict present in this fantasy world that we may have experienced in the past in our real world and and that's that's a good place both from a sanctuary standpoint through people who are maybe experiencing that in the real world to kind of get away from it in the fantasy world we wanted to provide that type of outlet

1:07:30

Okay and I think my real final is about the representation among the gods and perhaps the NPCs that initially owned the castles I'm hoping that those NPCs will still remain influential entities even after they're ousted from the castles

Yes

What about what about LGBT representation and racial representation among those heavy

I can I can say that there there is representation within the narrative both from a hero heroine standpoint and from a villain standpoint that it will not just be as binary in previous narratives that have come before our game there will be a presence for that and and and in the overarching storyline

Okay and it seemed like you were shaking your head yes that the the NPC's who initially owned the castles will remain influential are likely to remain influential characters even

Yes so I mean we have we have an we have a primary antagonist in the storyline right we have a particular culture that we haven't touched on at all and we don't want to from a story standpoint really that much you may see some information come out later with regards to it but for the most part those NPCs that occupy the castles before they're taken over by players do have a very important role both in the story as well as in the antagonist aspect of the world yeah

Right okay I got on my questions out Thank You Steven

Absolutely it was an absolute pleasure I enjoy like I said watching you guys theorycraft I think it's such an important part of the community to be able to sit in on shows like yours where they have an opportunity to just hear what other people are thinking about a game that they're passionate about the development of so I love what you guys do keep it up you guys have a lot of nice insight sometimes you're right sometimes you're wrong but it's always fun to sit back and listen

Exactly

Well cool yeah again thanks Steven for joining us and thank you everybody for watching and I think we are out of time so again we'll be back in two weeks if you like like listen to us talk as Steven won't be here but we will do this every other week going forward so again thanks Steven and have a good night and everyone see you later

Take care guys thank you very much [Music]