Talk:2018-08-04 BCG Discussion Round 3

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Transcription

53:43

The customization of equipment per race is really focused on Armor sets not Weapon props. Weapon props will, from a model standpoint, will translate pretty one-to-one across the races.

Let's say for example you have the Eagle set or something, right: The Eagle set has in art, it has a thematic design that's going to include certain attachments to the armor. It's going to include color palette and theme. It's going to have some aspects to it that define it as the Eagle set, right. When a Elf wears the Eagle set or when an Orc wears the Eagle set, you obviously have two different cultures there; and you don't want to stomp out that culture by assigning a de facto 'This is the Eagle set and this is how it looks on everybody.' What we want to have is cultural influences play a role in showing how that set looks.

55:17

When you say, what if I'm an Orc but want to look like an Elf and I want my Eagle set to be the Elf representation? Well the issue becomes there that you know Orcs have a different organic model. You know, their body is different than that of the Elf. So, from a scope-creep standpoint, it's one thing to add different influences that represent the cultures that are donning the armor; it's another thing to adapt each influence as a matrix that can be worn pretty much by everything. From a scope perspective, that's a very difficult task for the character artists to kind of tackle. So instead what we've done is, in order to facilitate a variety of cultural representation between the races but allow for the sharing of assets like different armor sets, we give different representations of those armor sets to each race.

1:05:50

I just don't want the game to be in a place where NDA drops and a lot of content creators feel like if I rip this game apart I'm gonna get more views but hey if

So that's always gonna first of all that's sentiment from certain content creators will always exist it's not a knock on who they are or their personalities it's just a matter of fact that clicks are baited by negative content more often than that positive content. That is the nature nature of the business when it comes to marketing unfortunately.

Oh you mean other content creators? I thought you mean like us? [laughter]

What I will say BCG is that you know at some point must you must take the plunge right at some point you must take the plunge and I think that what we have prepared for alpha one is of a state both from gameplay as well as polish that is presentable to the general public and gives them a nice idea of things. Now I will caveat that statement by saying that what people will initially see in alpha 1 is not representative of combat that will be in the game because it is purely action. Phase 1 of alpha 1 the arena mode stuff that is all action 100% and the reason behind that as we've said in the past is we want to [cross-talk]

Alpha 1 is only gonna have action combat in the arena

Phase 1 yes phase 1 will have only action and the reason for that is you know as we've said in the past we want to nail down action first before we do the integration into the tab targetable stuff, so that's that's something that's gonna be seen there.

1:08:25

Okay just this because I know people gonna what you just said they're gonna take this the wrong way just to clarify this. Again phase 1 alpha 1 you guys gonna have only action combat because you want to test the action combat part before you put it together with the tab targeting?

Correct

Just wanted to have that on the record

Theoretically because that brings up an interesting topic, since it's going to be a merged system, in your opinion do you think your final product is going to lean more heavily towards the tab targeting or the action combat side?

So the goal is to allow the player to make that decision from a from a skill creation standpoint on the design side for us what we do is we create a balance between the available skills within the skill tree of action-oriented and tab oriented and then as the player progresses in the game and they start to choose what skills they want to spec into they will have an option to weigh their available skills seventy-five percent in one direction or the other, so they can predominantly be action-oriented or predominantly be tab oriented. That's the design goal.

Is there any small examples that don't have to be things that are confirmed, but is there anything you can give an example to that?

Sure you know as an example you know if you let's say you're playing a ranged class you could have an action-oriented power shot in your skill tree or you could have a single target power shot that ramps up and does more damage. So for example what would happen with a single target power shot is you know it would do X damage modifiers and then it was also do some condition modifier like a snare or some whatever; perhaps some type of CC ability that you could greater spec into it right. There's multiple levels of a skill that you can that you can spec into. If you were to choose the action-oriented Power Shot, it would be something that you could build up it would fire in a line it would maybe less damage than the single target because it has an AoE effect a line AOE and then it's progression in the skill could be that it leaves some remnant of fire on the street that does damage over time if a player interacts with the line or something along those lines. So that would be an example of tab targetable skill that pertains to powershot or an action-oriented skill that is a line effect; but the variables between the damage, the charge uptime, the CC available affects, the you know all those things from us from a skill perspective would change based on which one's chosen.

So how do you plan on balancing like between like right let's say the ideal thing for a lot of people would just be guaranteed hits correct how would you especially like make it so it's not always [cross-talk]

Right the way you balance is, you take different CC conditions and you house them only in action or in tab targeted. So for example you would put hard cc's perhaps in in action oriented skills, because there's skill shots that are more difficult to land; and you would put softer cc's in the tab targeted abilities. That way we have if you have a group of a mixture of tab targeted and skill based combat that they wouldn't be able to proc combos off of each other where the tab target would get a guaranteed hit lock down a target and followed up by a high damage skill shot from another user. You would house these conditions in different types of skills and then you would play with the variables of data that are damage, cooldown, energy consumption, you know cost to spec, those types of things.

That's interesting

Let me I want to ask something well when it comes to combat this is personal curiosity and I just recently and I know I'm going to get a lot of crap for this so everybody just you know be nice to me. I just recently got back in a world of warcraft, anyways so they added a bunch of new stuff they had a bunch of new stuff and I started doing open world 40 versus 40 pvp fights because there's a new zone whatever and I just noticed that even though World of Warcraft there are some action targeting skills in that game there some and there's a lot of there's a lot of tab targeting in the game. I still have, you know there are still issues when it comes to big fights so how do you feel how do you feel when it comes to em sieges and big guild wars guild fights, how do you feel your system will hold up when it comes to the big scale stuff?

So if you're if you're speaking specifically with regards to balance?

No no performance by performance wise because performance okay because there's way more information when it comes to action combat compared to like tab targeting.

So our, well I mean there is there is different information BCG but from a from a package standpoint that information is not a higher taxation on the back end in either system. The only additional issue that comes up with regards to tab targeting and/or skillshots is the variable of time by which a person's latency might impact the server adjudicating their hit-or-miss notification. That is an added issue obviously whenever you're talking about skillshots, but there are ways to to address that on a back-end side such as having a latency period which is acceptable to the server for a particular connection you can you can know a client's ping and latency so that you can adjust that period that's available for server authenticated based attacks and whatnot. We also have a pretty amazing integrated anti-cheating solution that does you know you know check hey this person is hitting a hundred percent of the time on every skill-shot: Flag that person let's check their packets. You know there's there's absolutely ways to address that from a performance standpoint you won't see an issue on the server in either of those two systems one or the other it's not really a performance issue. I will say additionally you know our back-end is created to facilitate a large collection of people participating in sieges and fighting and whatnot so you know that's something that is as another aspect of phase one of alpha one testing is that you know we plan to have hundreds of people in battles with each other in this arena so that is part of testing the backend systems and I will say that that our initial a server-side fps as well as client-side fps is very very good so getting people into test will be a good thing.

1:16:13

I play a lot of Elder Scrolls and they have weapon swapping, so I'm curious as to if Ashes will implement some sort of weapon swapping or are we stuck to one weapon during combat?

So that's a good question and it is a lively debate among the designers currently with regards to being able to hot swap out equipment during battle. The general leaning is that if you are in combat within a number of seconds you aren't able to swap out gear that be weapons as well as as well as armor. I know that there's a lively debate even among gamers as whether or not they want that or don't want that it is something that lends itself more towards action oriented combat as well, being able to hot-swap stuff out, because it is to degree a skill based activity, right being able to bind those two keys on your hotbar and swapping out situationally what it's more appropriate; or being able to combo off different equipment. I will say that we haven't ruled it out though that it is something that I'd like to test before I give an answer off.

What about and this is something that I always thought would be a cool idea you know how for example in any Lord of the Rings movie you know they all have their main weapon and then they have like a secondary weapon which is maybe a small acts of dagger or something or something like that instead of having full weapon swaps?

For sure yeah I think I think that it is a I guess let me say this the answer is not one way or the other at the moment the answer is I would like to test that we have a list of things we'd like to test that our kind of design questions right okay and in testing will have more definitive answers on that it might be fine it's I don't have an answer one way or the other for this.

1:36:20

How are you going to make the hardcore raid scene in the sense of making that feel like an accomplishment whether it be through leaderboards or whether it be through really difficult mechanics kind of like what you know NAX 40 was like back in the beginning of like WoW where a very very small percentage of guilds could complete the content for a long period of time and then obviously through other patches that got rolled out that casual guilds or semi-hardcore guilds would eventually then catch up because a lot of the hardcore raid guilds myself included really want meaningful progression in raiding so that you know whether having difficult mechanics having to rely on you know your good raid team to actually come together as a 40man team and accomplish something rather than people being able to pug it every other Friday and have the same kind of benefits so my question mainly comes down to how are you gonna make hardcore progression or raiding progression difficult so that the hardcore scene and the casual scene will still have somewhere to play for the raiding background?

So there's two parts to that question: one is progression and then the other is not always tied to progression but meaningful accomplishments. First with regards to meaningful accomplishments: One of the things that's important for you know raiders guilds organisations pugs whatever it is to participate in content where they feel they can be the first to complete it on the server. That is a fun thing to do. It is a nice accomplishment to have and to show. One of the ways that we're going to facilitate that is as nodes advance they affect the spawn populations, the spawn tables in not just the open battle areas but also in open hunting grounds, but also in the dungeons and in the bosses that are available. What what we've decided to do which is going to be I think interesting is there is available space within the nodes at stage four five and six so this is the town city and metropolis stages that we like to call Trophy park; and Trophy park is basically an area within the node that will have available spots for a trophy to appear; and that trophy will include the character names of individuals who are the first to complete the spawned world bosses and/or dungeon bosses that came as a result of the development of that particular node. So as you know those populations change based on which nodes get developed and nodes lock out other nodes from developing, so if you have node A developed a stage five and at that stage they spawn you know the dragon boss in a nearby dungeon and it has yet to be defeated, the first raid group to go and defeat that boss will have a trophy appear in trophy Park. It will include, so that's a that's a cool thing from a server announcements/achievement standpoint that incentivizes groups who have yet to experience the content to go and try to defeat it.

1:39:47

Coupled with that is the difficulty setting. It will it needs to be challenging for groups to encounter these types of bosses and stuff it needs to be challenging because one the rewards warrant it and two because we want players to excel and achieve based on the content they're presented with now that challenge will will increase with the level of nodes in the nearby area right so the more developed a zone the more challenging the content and we feel that's a good progression when it comes to actual adventuring class because it will match both world development and it will also continue to allow for participation for new players if they may go into a zone that's recently been reset by either a siege or some other event right so that's that's a that's a from a progression standpoint you'll see that encounters like that progress with the development of the areas

And then additionally you know it is it comes down to the encounter itself and how fresh it can become is the boss always pulling from the same source of usable skills is it always you know the same cookie cutter kind of encounter. I don't think that that is that lends itself to a fun scenario. You want to have these types of encounters utilizing tactics and and abilities that you may not have experienced in your latest round or your last round of this encounter; and I think that kind of will raise the bar for what guilds and organisations and/or alliances or you know public gatherings are capable of defeating these bosses.

Leaderboards are absolutely going to be a thing as well you're going to have a lot of different metrics that are kind of tracked from a public server perspective and that's not to mention like you know the stock exchange that's going to take a note of accomplishments of certain guilds. You know it's it's there's a lot of stuff there that that's being created in order to facilitate not only a competitive atmosphere of raiding but also an engaging and dynamic one.

1:42:14

Let me let me add this quick yes or no question I think gondol is gonna be interesting this as well because I mean gondola pretty much from this cut from the same cloth and will there be will there be instanced raids or raids in general where even veteran raiders will have a hard time and it could take up to even months to beat a boss is that something you guys are planning on to make something like a raid that hard that is maybe 1% of the server population can can beat that one raid?

Months to beat a boss. I don't know about months but there's definitely going to be particular world bosses that have stages of progression where you'll have to defeat you know acolytes to lieutenants to generals then to the world boss and at each stage you have this increasing difficulty and that may be parsed out into different time periods and be behind a wall of development on top of it so I mean to answer your question there is going to be there will be some in depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and I would say you know from a Content perspective when you're referring to percentages of population that can encounter these things yes I believe that there will be a very very small percentage I don't know necessarily what the number will be but it would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content that it doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well it's it's just that there should there should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish if there is no if there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced then there is no drive to excel and I think it's important to constantly and especially mmo's because you have many different gears by which you know players are incentivized to excel you know getting the top-end gear getting the highest skills getting the top level getting the best craftsmanship being the best Raider all of those things are our progression paths that should be ladders that players can you know drive to excel in and I think that translates into the raid system as well

1:44:54

Okay, well that basically answers most of most of my fears of it the only thing I guess I have I saw in Twitch chat here was they're talking about crafters being important as in for raider's progression especially in like my own guild we we're very much trying to incentivize having a like a dedicated crafting department and when you're talking about world bosses and dropping you know mats and things like that my question becomes I understand that it would be a world boss so is it more of a tagging system that anybody can basically a participate in or is it going to be like a raid team tags that boss and they have a the app they have the ability to try to take it down and only they would get the loot that would drop from it obviously you'd have PvP influences trying to stop you but would it just be for them alone or would it be for anybody that is tagged a boss and is standing around just kind of leeching?

There is a few thoughts on that and those few thoughts need to be tested when it comes to the design of the tag system. Whether or not it be a from a from a gatherers okay so remember we have gatherers we have processors, we have crafters. Part of gathering is being able to I guess spoil you know the loot from a particular creature and/or boss or something. So if you want to be able to get those mats from the boss they're just not going to drop for anybody. They will only drop for a master gatherer who is capable of extracting those resources from the creature itself. So it is very, the reason why we say there's a lot of interdependencies between the crafters of the world and the Raiders of the world and our PvPers of the world is because we don't want to house the capability to attain these things all within the adventuring class. We want there to be an influence necessary from the craftsmen's guild to come in to either come and participate and spoil the boss and gather the goods or something along those lines. With regards to the dynamics of authority you know who who gathers those things exactly what is that the party leader of the first tagging raid is that the most damage dealing is that the you know whatever: Those are things we've got a test in testing and see how they turn out. I don't have a direct answer on that one.

1:47:21

Anybody else?

I've got to chip in and because Gundel talked about competitive raiding. I'm more of a competitive PvP player and you talked about giving like server first people like a trophy. What will they be done for me as a PvP player as a given incentive? Will there also be a certain thing let's say for amount of caravans attacked or defended or ya know things like that?

Oh yeah absolutely. Yeah so part of a part of our metric solution which is like you know tracking this data on the server you know how many whether it be a quest perspective how many defenses have you successfully done how many assaults have you successfully destroyed you know how many pvp kills do you have how many raid participation points do you have how many firsts you have all these things we want to track which means in tracking them we will then facilitate achievements titles accolades in the server as much as we can because in our in my opinion you know visibility of those types of things on the server help to promote a competitive atmosphere if there is an attainable impression that you can work towards so that others know your success you are have you have more drive to succeed and that's something from just a social aspect that is specifically with regards to massively multiplayer games that I think if you put more in you know just from a pure retention standpoint from for players you're going to see higher retention because those players have it have a drive to accomplish something

1:49:08

Okay so so you're basically just in short you're saying that you want you're actually making steps into having Ashes be competitive for anyone so that they can get certain or titles or rewards actually competitive?

Absolutely

That's I like that I like that

If I'm a master crafter and I have the most crafted legendary tiered items I want the world to know about it you know that's something that should be should be the case

So like what I always remember fondly of and anybody who played World of Warcraft can remember this it's back and with Warcraft classic the warlord title

Yeah baby

Yeah which was something that every PvP player was aiming for because there was always just one on the whole server on each side can we expect something like that Steven? but let me explain

All right hold on one second

1:54:15

So we've heard of guild halls and fortresses as being open world battlegrounds, what sort of objectives are planned for these and how often can we expect to be able to participate in these smaller scale PvP battlegrounds? Because we've already heard of castles and node wars and caravans and a lot of people are questioning what do PvPers get to do besides raid and stuff when they want to do other stuff besides caravans in that?

Well outside of like guild wars, node wars, castle sieges, caravans, arenas, ganking, there's a lot of PvP in my opinion that's available in the world, but with regards to like guild halls and fortresses it really depends because that kind of plays into the guild war system. We don't have, so the way that guild halls and guild and guild fortresses work is that they provide at higher level. There's levels of guild wars, by the way. So you know the lower the level the lower level guild that's available and depending on what assets that guild has available, whether it be a guild hall or guild fortress there are objectives that spawn in the world based on the level of the guild war and the assets available. So if you have a guild hall and a certain type of guild wars is declared that is maybe a higher statement stakes kind of war, some of those objectives will be centralized either at your guild hall, at the opponent's guild hall; could be a progression step towards the guild hall. It might be a specific a period of time that accumulates into into a central battle at the guild hall for an objective, you know I can't really define exactly what those features are yet because that does that design stage is still up in the air from a discussion standpoint. There's a lot of different ideas that relates to how those two can come into play, but I will say that in every MMO I've ever played guild wars are very binary they're very like 'Okay you've declared, you have a number of kills to deaths and the guild war's over thank you. You know that's that's generally how they've been done in the past you know my objective to kind of change that dynamic is to include greater risk for the sides to initiate the war and also to make it more objective-based than just a binary kill death ratio; and the fortresses and guild halls come into that type of facilitating that change.

1:57:12

Yeah 'cause like a lot of PvPers I know and I'm a PvPer. A lot oh we're kind of asking like is Ashes gonna be able to fulfill that you know battleground style thing even if it's open world like or like Warhammer online kind of had a similar thing.

Warhammer online had a great system I'm so sad what happened there

1:57:56

Over a long period of time there's always discussion on the Discord about what's the definition of pay to win and funny thing is funny thing is a lot of people agree on that part I think with me, a lot of people have different definitions as pay2win. I know and you always say it pay to win and you always said the cosmetics the store will only have cosmetics and I just wanted I just want you to make me feel easier and you know to finally get this like out once and for all for anybody who is any doubts about what you're saying and what is your definition of pay to win?

My definition of pay to win is really anything that affects the in-game economy, the in-game action pool, your abilities and/or skills and yeah [cross-talk]/ Pretty much just visual appearance.

Would inventory slots and XP boosts count as pay2win for you?

In my opinion the inventory slots and the XP potions would be considered pay2win, yes

Good. I'm good I'm good it's all yours. I'm good. I'm going to the bank. I'm going to the bank I need to buy more stuff.

Some people try to to clarify you know pay to win apart from quote unquote paid to convenience and they would say you know XP potions and inventory slots and that type of thing those are all pay to convenience items. Well you know pay to convenience is just a lighter pay to win so in my opinion.

2:00:05

Steven on that point, head start [cross-talk]

I was just gonna say head start is something that absolutely it is absolutely something that's necessary from a server stability standpoint at launch. Now I know we have alpha test we have beta testing we have testing before that but you can't account for every thing once you wipe a server. Things can go wrong so the point of head start is twofold: one for testing making sure that the live launch servers pre-wipe are good and then two, it's a way to stagger the population move into the game. Because if you have servers with 10,000 concurrent player capability and you have everyone logging in at the exact same time that is a very that is it that is a problem I've never seen an MMO tackle successfully, ever. So you know part of head starts is to alleviate that issue. Now we have done the best we can to mitigate how much impact a head start has on player, level playing field, you know that pay2win aspect of it. It's in my opinion it's a separate issue because if I start playing a game on day one and I play for 24 hours straight and then go to sleep. Is the person who plays for you know 36 hours straight you know going to have an advantage over me necessarily? No because there's going to be I mean they might if you if you reduce the period of time to 48 hours, yes they would. But if you extend that out over a week or two weeks that advantage goes away pretty quick. So you know from an advantageous standpoint, from a from a win aspect I think that that Head Start gets mitigated fairly quickly in the life of the of the game. If you add then additionally the fact that we're turning off node progression so they don't get access to nodes progressing during that time, then it mitigates it even further. But from a testing perspective it's something that's really necessary honestly.

Is like everything in the world like at that point like like capped at a certain level like level two or something?

No it just means that the nodes don't collect and don't progress so whatever the base spawn table slash population tables are will stay that way. Hooks to quests that propagate at the advancement of a node won't be available. So it's going to be basically you know you're gonna enter the world you're gonna have your entry level questing, but you're not going to see those quests hook into a node that advances to one or two. So you're gonna need to find you know if you're a head start tester, you're gonna get the initial quests, you're gonna have those ready, right. Again mitigating advantage; and then you're also going to be able to move out into the to the open world hunting grounds and perhaps get like area side quests and stuff like that. But anything that pertains to a quest that connects into a node or nodes collecting experience or you know building house whatever, you can't do those things because the node system will be off.

Oh yeah a lot of people think that you will be able to grind on mobs and just get to like level 40 or something before the game even like is out.

Our progression tables are not that low, like I know I know a lot of Western players are pretty accustomed to a casual progression in you know if a person wants to go out and hunt in a hunting ground you know in some games that have been westernized they can go and get you know max level in a few days. That's not the case in Ashes a lot a lot does pull into the quest system, but if you're going to go out and and grind in hunting areas and stuff, yes you'll be able to progress but you won't be you know level 40 out of 50 in two days you'll it'll be tempered.

I mean, I get for a lot of people are coming from a lot of people that think that Head Start is pay2win and the thing is that I think a lot of people don't realize is that you know there are headstart servers and there are non headset servers and as long as you have a choice on to what's are we gonna start I don't consider pay to win if it would be just one server then it would be a different story at least in my opinion.

Yeah that's another that's a very good point thank you I can't unfortunately sometimes I can't remember everything but another good point is that as BCG said there are headstart designated servers so it's also not pay to win because you may choose to join the server that doesn't have had starters or join servers that do have had starters.

So based on the kickstarter you actually about 3,000 people from kickstarter with head start, is that enough?

Yeah I believe so.

I really I shouldn't expect it to be in the store for me to buy anytime soon.

It's currently in the store. It's currently in the Intrepid pack. That's that's something that's available. Again because those because those servers are designated if you have head starters on a particular server, you know that that server already has headstart capability. So until until our designated number of servers with headstart get filled up it's still available in the Intrepid pack, that might not be available for long though I'd say.

Steven it doesn't say on the Intrepid pack.

Oh does it not?

I'm literally checking right now as well [cross-talk].

Okay, oh no, wait. If it's not on the Intrepid pack then that's fine. I thought it was. That's name reservation. I'm sorry.

I can already see the Reddit.

Would you guys ever consider giving two-day head start for the people who brought the Intrepid pack?

No I think the head starts actually are probably not going to appear again, so. I thought they were were in the Intrepid pack. I'm sorry I've stayed up really late last night writing shit, so.