Talk:2022-06-30 Livestream

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Intro

• 0:00

[Music]

• 0:19

hello everyone salutations and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation june

• 0:25

development update we hope that everyone is well and safe and been having a wonderful month we've got a three-day

• 0:31

weekend coming up we're excited hello it's fourth of july

• 0:37

yeah here in the u.s so we're excited about that and of course we're excited to show off a little bit

• 0:43

of combat so if you um don't know us i'm margaret crone our community marketing lead and with me as

• 0:50

always is the one the only stephen sharif aka our creative director um and his beautiful blooms behind him

• 0:58

the orchids oh yeah that's right the orchids can i see that yeah they can

• 1:05

see that um and of course uh today we will be going over our quick reminders and then

• 1:10

we'll be showing off something you all have been anticipating which is a small slice of combat but this will be

• 1:17

our basic weapon attack update we'll be also showcasing some character arts updates and doing our studio update and

• 1:24

then q a doing stuff in a little different order because we want to get straight to the juicy stuff because we

• 1:29

know yes we have taken your feedback into our run of show and margaret has changed things around so we get to the

• 1:35

meat faster all right and of course for that uh we

Reminders

• 1:40

have our next dev discussion which is going to be about

• 1:46

i mean it was already up already it's about gear color customization so we asked you how do you feel about dyeing

• 1:52

your gear how far would you like the system to go do you prefer a full color range that allows for some odd color

• 1:58

combinations or more limited one that preserves visual fidelity and realism so

• 2:03

if you haven't gone over to our forums given us feedback on that please do um

• 2:09

because we would like that and then of course our next one will be on world map discovery so definitely toss us your

• 2:15

feedback on that there's been some changes on the world map front but uh

• 2:21

i think we'll save that for a future update but there has been some significant changes yeah just to tease

• 2:27

that i mean that's going to be a fun update i can't wait to i can't wait to showcase that

• 2:34

and of course we have our comment of the day um or of the month i should say and if

• 2:40

you would like your comment to be chosen all you have to do is when we upload

• 2:45

this to youtube go over there leave us a comment make sure you subscribe to us on youtube and if you are subscribed we

• 2:52

will be picking a random subscriber to be showcased and for this one we've got

• 2:57

uh rom slb who wants to know or who noted love this idea and impact of

• 3:03

seasons in the economy however i feel that one week real time per season is

• 3:08

way too short it should be like a month in my eyes otherwise uh this this vision

• 3:15

of people carrying things around won't really happen people will just stock up a lot for the winter and that's it

• 3:22

so that's an interesting comment and and um actually just want to touch on it real quick

• 3:28

the weather systems the season systems that's going to be a obvious point of

• 3:33

testing for alpha 2 of course you know we're going to play around with the different cycles and and times

• 3:39

and how they impact the economy the rotation of resources the movement of goods like all of those things play into

• 3:47

the purpose one of the purposes of having seasonal systems so that is something that we are going to

• 3:53

play with during our alpha 2 testing and will land on what feels both most

• 3:58

comfortable is visually appealing but also has the impact on the economy that we desire to

• 4:04

see on the design side yes so of course thank you all for your feedback we've got a ton of seasonal

• 4:11

feedback and we'll be compiling some of those things and sharing them with our development

• 4:16

team so we really super duper appreciate all of that um and of course just a quick reminder

• 4:22

that our opulent negotiations uh cosmetics swap over will be happening july 13th at 11 am pacific uh reminder

• 4:30

that all of the variants made from these sets you'll see in game is npcs creatures buildings etc and we'll

• 4:36

actually be showcasing some variants today if you don't follow us super closely for those of you who do you

• 4:42

might uh have already seen some of those but we've made some updates to the imagery and with that um i think we can

Basic Weapon Attack Update

• 4:48

go into our basic weapon attack combat update yes that's some preference i would like to

• 4:55

yes i'd like to preface the video um so i made this uh

• 5:00

decision what was three weeks ago i stepped into uh it was like four weeks ago

• 5:07

yeah i stepped in and i i talked with mark i had another topic originally planned for you

• 5:13

however it had been weighing on me that um

• 5:18

you know i wanted to begin showing some of the combat that we were getting completed uh

• 5:24

for alpha 2. and rather than having a big grand reveal of all of the class

• 5:30

kits and abilities and and the combat changes that we've made i want to

• 5:36

segment up these updates into smaller chunks so that people have an opportunity to comment on specific

• 5:43

aspects of the changes that we've made for combat and the first and foremost one that made

• 5:49

sense for us to do which is probably the the most foundationally core aspect of

• 5:54

combat is going to be the basic weapon attacks and i wanted to showcase and focus on the changes that have been made

• 6:01

with regards to the directional movement functionality root motion versus split

• 6:06

body the ancillary components of combat that are animation vfx and audio

• 6:14

and just show that at a base weapon level so we decided that for this month what

• 6:19

we're going to do is give you guys a look at those basic weapon functions there's a couple of skills that are that

• 6:25

are thrown in there from our weapon master class but um it's primarily focused on the feeling

• 6:32

of that basic weapon combo attack right and um i want to make sure

• 6:38

that you content creators out there uh who who make content for for ashes and

• 6:43

kind of you know relate to your audiences the updates that we provide that you contextualize this update in

• 6:49

the appropriate manner because of course our engaged audiences they see this update they've been watching our

• 6:55

progress for a significant amount of time and they can they can touch point a to b to c and

• 7:00

see that progress but unengaged audiences they look at something and

• 7:06

they don't necessarily always have the best context for active development and what is a work in progress of course and

• 7:13

they will look at something and assume it's a vital product as you know this is not the final product we always iterate

• 7:18

we continue to improve there's a lot of stuff that still goes into making combat a good thing and combat's a really

• 7:24

touchy subject because you know you see weather effects and you see seasons and those can look

• 7:30

universally good or you see a character creator you get the versatility and the functionality that's

• 7:35

present there the customization options those can those can be universally perceived as very good combat is a very

• 7:42

different type of subject right there are a lot of different ways that combat can be portrayed in games

• 7:48

all of us have our own uh subjective view of what is good combat do we want

• 7:54

super fast pace very tactile uh slower pace tab targeting all those types

• 7:59

there's there's a realm of preference exactly there's a realm of preference there but with that being

• 8:05

said we have taken feedback specifically from alpha one um and we've tried to iterate

• 8:11

upon that feedback and present it in such a way with this video that gives you context for those basic weapon

• 8:17

feelings those root foundational types of movement and pacings

• 8:23

that exist so keep that in mind when you content creators out there are kind of relaying this information to the

• 8:28

audiences that might not be as familiar with the project let them know this is just to focus on

• 8:34

the basic weapon attacks it is focusing on that aspect of combat we will we will

• 8:39

unveil additional aspects of combat being ability systems

• 8:44

class rotations we'll talk about the vfx pipeline and how that advances with

• 8:50

with the ability system as well um you know those are going to be additional beats that we hit leading up to the next

• 8:57

few months that we'll showcase on these streams but this first one is the melee specific basic webinar yes that's

• 9:04

right absolutely yeah exactly absolutely so keep that in mind um i i had a great

• 9:12

time filming this yesterday uh i think the team has done a phenomenal job if you do some comparisons between where we

• 9:19

were last year and where we are today there's a significant difference so i have taken your feedback from alpha one

• 9:25

absolutely you all sent us a lot of great feedback a lot of those things were things we already were thinking of

• 9:30

adjusting and changing as well so we hope that you see that culmination as we showcase this and you know as we

• 9:36

showcase further along the other pieces that steven just mentioned uh we will

• 9:42

hopefully you'll be able to see some of the feedback just from this update absolutely very excited guys

• 9:48

enjoy ready all right we'll see on the flip side

• 9:54

[Music]

• 10:09

so

• 10:19

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to another

• 10:26

live stream day for Ashes of Creation super excited to be with everybody today we have a pretty awesome showcase

• 10:32

i think it's something that the community has been asking for for a little while actually i think the last

• 10:38

time we showcased uh some combat gameplay was a year ago

• 10:44

roughly almost um but i am very excited to show you guys what we have in the works today um

• 10:50

i have joining us with me today two of our extraordinary engineers

• 10:57

adam and kenan how you guys doing hello stephen doing well how are you i am doing very

• 11:04

good running around like a chicken with its head cut off but otherwise very good

• 11:10

nice keenan how you doing buddy i'm doing good glad to be here awesome

• 11:15

i'm excited to have you this is your first stream i believe correct this is my first stream very cool adam you've been on a couple ones before this yeah

• 11:22

yeah yeah it's good to be back very cool and then i also have joining us today one of our senior game

• 11:30

designers mr trad how you doing buddy i'm doing great i'm glad to be back on

• 11:35

stream welcome back very excited to show what you guys have been working on what the team has been working on

• 11:42

i know i probably already said this on the stream but i'm going to reiterate it

• 11:48

here that this what you're about to see is not the final combat in ashes

• 11:54

this is a portion of the combat systems obviously a lot goes into making combat

• 12:00

right from a visual effects perspective from mechanics and functionality on the engineering side

• 12:06

the design elements and how it synergizes with our class kits and ability systems the

• 12:11

you know balance of these things the audio component the ui there's a lot that goes into making

• 12:17

combat for an mmorpg and the combat you're going to see today is very focused on

• 12:24

one component actually two components i'm sorry um the first of which is our basic melee weapon

• 12:32

attacks in addition to our floating text ui so

• 12:38

keeping that in mind that is the context of today's presentation previously

• 12:44

i had decided that i wanted to wait to showcase combat until

• 12:49

excuse me until we had um pretty much everything done and ready to

• 12:54

show and as time grew i decided what i wanted to do

• 13:00

instead was showcase little portions of each uh component of the combat system

• 13:06

starting with the basic melee weapon attacks and then we'll move into in a later live stream

• 13:13

the ability systems and the class kits and of course we're not going to show every class kit and you know everything

• 13:18

that's going to be in alpha 2 we want some of that to be a surprise right but we do want to showcase

• 13:24

um the work that's been done and the direction that's been taken so that we get player feedback and

• 13:31

personally you know playing this i think it feels amazing i think it looks great i'm super

• 13:37

impressed continually by our team's talents um as i know a lot in the

• 13:43

community are after having seen the character creator and the weather systems and season systems um

• 13:50

you know there's a there's a very high quality bar that we're we're setting ourselves up for uh with ashes of

• 13:55

creation and i i think it is it is what you know the community wants um but it's

• 14:00

great to have these touch points where we get um where we get your feedback so focus today is going to be on basic

• 14:06

melee weapon attacks um it's going to be on root motion versus split body the types of agency that's provided to the

• 14:12

player while also respecting the weightedness we want from certain weapon groups and also talking about the ui

• 14:19

element and showcasing floating text and the types of customization options that players are going to have so keep that

• 14:24

in mind that's the context of of today's presentation and when you give the commentary let's

• 14:30

let's focus on what you like and what you think there could be improvements on um from that perspective so without

• 14:36

further ado we are in probably an area that you guys are familiar with um

• 14:42

this is the riverlands biome yet again um you saw this in the the last month's

• 14:48

livestream but we are in an area that is known to harbor

• 14:53

um some scary things um so i'm just gonna start kind of

• 14:59

walking down in this area and um adam keenan tratt if you guys want to talk a little bit about

• 15:05

how this process began all those months ago on defining

• 15:10

good combat for Ashes of Creation

• 15:15

uh sure um [Music] i would say you know it starts with you know all of the hundreds of

• 15:23

thousands of hours cumulative hours of mmo that we have under our belt right we have a lot of hours of mmo gameplay

• 15:29

under our belts we just got to push a couple buttons and we're immediately like oh it feels good

• 15:35

or it doesn't feel good you know it's funny keenan actually you say that one of the koala i mean you guys all

• 15:40

know this because every one of you went through an interview with me but one of the qualifying aspects of joining the

• 15:45

team is what type of mmos do you like to play [Laughter]

• 15:50

nice yeah so it starts there uh and then from there we sort of do our research you

• 15:56

know we have to take a look at the state of the art and then we we

• 16:02

we study it we form hypotheses about what exactly it is that makes things

• 16:08

feel good or not feel good um and then we make those things in as

• 16:13

controlled a manner as we can and then we turn the knobs we tweak things we see what feels good what doesn't feel good

• 16:19

we come up with some rules some processes and then uh we put them to the test

• 16:25

and this is this is what comes out yeah it's um it's very iterative iterative process right like you know

• 16:32

none of these things are like you form your theory on paper and then you go and you make the thing and it comes out to

• 16:38

be exactly what you see now right like it starts out the first time not super great and then

• 16:44

what we have to be able to do is engineers is

• 16:50

[Music] as long as you keep making it better

• 16:56

each time eventually you're going to end up with something good yeah and for uh this exercise and

• 17:02

finding what makes ash is great specifically we wanted to approach it from the ground

• 17:08

up answering individual questions about our hypotheses and what we think is good

• 17:14

right so we we really focused on individual aspects

• 17:19

that we think makes good combat and answered them one at a time in a very tightly uh

• 17:25

very tight iterative process and we ended up at something that uh we

• 17:32

think feels really really good so yeah just just playing this i am loving the

• 17:38

hit reacts the visual effects all the ancillary components that go into making the combat but but more importantly

• 17:45

the pacing of this kind of heavier weapon group um

• 17:50

also as a side note uh outside of the combat one of the things i've not necessarily

• 17:56

liked about mmos traditionally in the past is that excuse me every portion of land is

• 18:03

covered by some type of monster right and it kind of gives you this weird feel but here like this is a very

• 18:10

dangerous area that we're in the environment and part of it gets communicated by the

• 18:16

you know aspect of these rocks and like the specific types of materials that's represented here but you don't know

• 18:22

exactly where the threat lies per se right you kind of move up into an area

• 18:27

and if you move too far you get the audio cue of the of the monsters like

• 18:33

arising your character gets into the combat stance they have some really cool aspects of

• 18:38

of animation the animation team did an amazing job with the rolls here i am loving and also they're like death it's

• 18:45

just like swinging away and then flying off that is so great yeah i really like like the camp feel of

• 18:51

of this area where you know you don't just see these guys scattered around all over the world no matter where you go

• 18:57

there's like something that's going to aggro you it's more like i'm going to grind here for a bit

• 19:04

yeah steven you were talking about how you like how heavy the wet the sword feels and um

• 19:12

that weight impact that is one of the combat pillars that we have been studying and honing in

• 19:17

on in our development process the other side of it is um the other side of it being uh also like

• 19:25

agency you know to what extent does this weapon respect your intentions and that's the part that's important to me

• 19:31

i'm a you know i'm a classic player i come from traditional mmos right like i i want to be able to move and attack at

• 19:37

the same time right yes and that was a huge point of feedback actually that we received during alpha one

• 19:44

was that we started with this more root motion approach to the basic weapon

• 19:50

attacks and ultimately we we called an audible mid test

• 19:55

i remember it was in that that end of july or beginning of august month um where we decided to implement a a

• 20:02

completely split body approach and get player feedback and of course the feedback was was very positive or

• 20:07

soundingly positive right um that players prefer that agency

• 20:12

over that weightedness but they also there's a little bit of a conflict there because they also didn't like the floaty

• 20:19

feeling which comes along with not having the weighted approach so how

• 20:24

did that play into your guys's defining this current approach on the

• 20:30

weapon attacks how did you blend those two yeah so we kind of approached it from looking at

• 20:37

player agency primarily as kanan had said and the games that really handled uh uh

• 20:43

player agency the best are those like classic mmos right players really like how smooth uh the

• 20:49

classic mmo feel how much player agency they get out of it and then we we took that and we tried building the sort of

• 20:56

impact and weight on top of it really making attacks feel satisfying making it

• 21:01

feel like the inertia of the weapon and your movements are are accurate you know physically accurate and we accomplished

• 21:09

that through a number of ways really again talking about the process we try to identify each individual aspect of uh

• 21:17

of what we got out of these you know more modern action games and tried incorporating that into our classic mmo

• 21:24

base you know i think i think it all comes down to looking at

• 21:30

it not as a binary of you know are we doing split body or are we doing root motion combat it's looking

• 21:36

at everything as modular pieces and then dialing in those numbers to make something that

• 21:43

feels high in player agency feels very impactful like it has a lot of inertia

• 21:49

it feels very physical yeah my litmus test for agency in combat

• 21:55

is take any moment in combat pause time look down at your hands look at the keyboard

• 22:00

the buttons that you're pressing should be the directions that your character is moving so with these weapons even though there

• 22:06

are little uh like little bits of root motion here or there they're always respecting your

• 22:13

wondering input and i think that's what makes them feel good i think another thing that you guys did

• 22:18

that helps with that is the timing of what that gets registered right like it's not you know at one

• 22:24

point one iteration we had it where it detected what your input was at the

• 22:30

beginning of the attack and that just felt like if i decided to change my mind and go left instead of right

• 22:36

in the middle of that attack it's too bad it already kind of cute that and so i think now what you guys

• 22:42

are doing is having it happen at like swing time right

• 22:48

yup it's constantly looking at your input and adjusting now i've equipped these these daggers

• 22:54

this dual wielding uh uh these dual daggers talk to me a little bit about the differences between the heavier um

• 23:02

weapon group and the light weapon group yeah um so initially in our uh

• 23:10

investigation we wanted to start with the the light weapons to figure out

• 23:15

how to really blend uh uh the the weight of an attack um

• 23:21

and and introduce or start with player agency and then introduce that weight of the attack into it we figured the least

• 23:28

risky weapon to start with would be the lightest weapon possible you know little daggers that move very fast very high

• 23:34

player agency and uh not necessarily focused on big weight much like a heavy sword so

• 23:42

um we started with that and tried introducing little bits and pieces here and there like small bits of root motion

• 23:47

to get that nice like dashy feel in when you're when you're attacking and uh play

• 23:52

into that inertia um i know uh keena might want to talk more about the

• 23:58

uh animation timing sheets we introduced for figuring out these uh timings that

• 24:04

feel good yeah that's part of our process for communicating cross-department is using

• 24:10

frame timing diagrams and being specific about how we not only want to animate but also how we want to move during

• 24:17

different frames of the animation and we found that to be very successful

• 24:22

but one of the things that makes the daggers different than the sword is that the daggers never really slow you down

• 24:29

they're both respecting your directions but the swords will actually slow you down at certain times like leading up

• 24:34

into the strike your split body movement is sort of uh blending down towards zero and then you

• 24:41

strike and then it blends back up toward to one the daggers are are not doing any blending like that you're just split

• 24:48

body and then you're striking and then you're back into split body and it's sick of seamless process

• 24:54

yeah i'm just playing with the directionals here i mean on the animation team they did a a phenomenal job i'm loving

• 25:01

the kind of foot placement and movement the strafing feeling on the body there i

• 25:06

know alexi did a lot of work on the ik as well that we can see like when you're you know kind of stepping up different

• 25:11

portions um that's it feels really good to play

• 25:17

oh yeah considering how uh physically based we are and animation driven our combat system is

• 25:23

uh it was super important that the animators you know get all of that right and they absolutely knocked it out of

• 25:29

the park i mean one of the biggest things i think uh to making good feeling attacks is

• 25:35

getting all of the departments involved in what feels good and on the same page right

• 25:40

getting everyone iterating uh so you know like in the process we started with chopping up animations to build an

• 25:45

ability that we thought felt good and then we wanted to pass that off to animation to finalize those animations

• 25:51

by chopping up our abilities and making animations that feel good and then we can all loop everyone back together and

• 25:57

finalize that ability uh you know vfx has the same process too so you know it's it's a bunch of different

• 26:03

departments iterating on a very micro scale to build something that is just awesome

• 26:09

yeah the animation team definitely had to take a deep breath when we went to them like hey

• 26:14

you know those three-part weapon combos that we like so much uh we want different ones for each direction that

• 26:20

you can move in oh and also you need to be able to weave between the directionals at any time

• 26:28

that is pretty funny um one of the things that's uh interesting and is always a point of contention for those

• 26:35

of us who have perhaps played different games and have become accustomed to a specific

• 26:42

visual representation of these these damage floating text right

• 26:47

and i want to showcase a little bit i'm going to let them hit on me for a little bit just so you can kind of see

• 26:52

directionally damage you take which is indicated in this red number floats towards

• 26:57

your left hand side and when you do damage to a target they float to your

• 27:03

right hand side now one of the very important aspects of these floating texts

• 27:09

is providing the player with customization options that they can

• 27:14

adjust the size of the floating text they can adjust the color composition on how these texts are represented they can

• 27:22

also include damage icons to indicate the ability that's used for those

• 27:27

floating texts and importantly excuse me we also call out the um uh the crits

• 27:35

that you do in a separate way how they pop in they're slightly above those um the other numbers um and then more so we

• 27:42

also have additional functionality for cumulative damage uh value so i'm gonna kind of go through that you'll see here

• 27:49

as i press um you know different option now we've changed the colors

• 27:54

um whoops hold on let me see make sure is that color going off differently or

• 28:00

am i just do i not have my hold on

• 28:05

is it okay let me try this quick

• 28:14

oh maybe that's not oh let me find a different monster i hope that's working if it's not we can

• 28:20

show that um a little bit later uh let me press this button oh here we go

• 28:27

okay so you see the color is changing now and that's something that the player has agency over right you can assign

• 28:33

different types of colors that you want um that was changing i think the one i was

• 28:39

pressing actually was changing the size so let me try to change that size again there you go you can see that size now

• 28:45

is larger you can showcase xp if you want you can bold in the numbers a little bit as well but

• 28:52

providing kind of maximum flexibility and character customization um excuse me player customization options for these

• 28:58

floating texts i think is super important but i love the way that they feel that kind of classic um very almost

• 29:04

um uh what are we saying canon very vanilla vibe oh yeah sometimes the best flavor is

• 29:11

just vanilla absolutely totally agree

• 29:16

yeah but the ui team's done a great job on the functionality for that i think it's feeling pretty good

• 29:24

yeah that's very cool so where are we now when it comes to kind of the the

• 29:29

spectrum of light to heavy attack options on these basic weapon attacks

• 29:35

um what's kind of next for this as we showcase it to the players

• 29:41

well i think we've sort of defined our spectrum with the light and the heavy when it comes to agency versus weight versus impact

• 29:49

when you look at the heavy i think we're we're close to saying that this is sort of the most we want to compromise agency

• 29:57

for weight and impact and once we have that upper bound we can sort of play with all

• 30:03

of the different uh intermediate points right as we start to build out other weapons

• 30:08

but we have interesting explorations as well and how all of this translates into ranged and um also ultimates we might we

• 30:16

might take the limiters off for ultimates and just see what the coolest things we can make are yeah that that's

• 30:21

going to be pretty interesting another component by the way of defining um kind of this weapon attacks is also the

• 30:28

visual effects side um and weapon trailings the intensity of those weapon trailings how they scale based on the

• 30:34

type of weapon the level of weapon that you have uh but not just the trailing on the weapon per se but also the grand

• 30:40

ground decals like for this heavy weapon that first strike you see that kind of that decal in the ground is i love that

• 30:47

look and even on the back swing like when i hit the ground behind me it's causing that decal

• 30:55

yeah a lot of that stuff gets down into the really low level systems details like we want to pass

• 31:01

the artists as much information as we can about actual combat ongoings so that

• 31:07

they can inform the effects as precisely as they can or as precisely as they need to rather

• 31:13

yeah and we really wanted to build the on a technical side we really

• 31:19

wanted to build the combat system to like like i said earlier be as physical as possible so we have it very animation

• 31:26

driven everything is handled based on a reference of animation as opposed to uh like

• 31:34

nebulous timings right which allows it to feel very impactful and very

• 31:39

responsive so when you hit the ground the ground decal actually appears on the ground when it should uh

• 31:45

you know that's uh something that may not be seen in other mmos so we really wanted to

• 31:51

make a big focus on that and and focus on the responsiveness yeah one thing i failed to mention by

• 31:57

the way i apologize for that is actually um you guys are seeing the pi ray male for the first time in

• 32:05

game i know we've showed him on this on the stream before um as these character races get further

• 32:10

fleshed out but here you're seeing him in full flesh and blood so to speak virtual flesh and blood i guess um

• 32:17

in the game that's that's pretty cool to see i can't wait for players to kind of get a look at the customization options

• 32:22

and the character creator for this for this race um uh also another thing

• 32:27

that's um you know really important i think is uh

• 32:33

the audio component and cat has done a phenomenal job

• 32:39

in both the sound design for creatures as well as for the

• 32:44

the weapon and actually you guys haven't seen anything yet because we have a lot in store on that front that i think is going to be is

• 32:51

going to be pretty cool and it and it's all part of the presentation right it's all part of what makes

• 32:56

combat feel good is also the auditory component um in that talk to me a little

• 33:03

bit about the capabilities that that the audio team has

• 33:08

when it comes to accessing combat and the abilities yeah similar to vfx we plan on piping in

• 33:15

a lot of information uh you know that's something we've been working a lot on recently is tooling for vfx and sound effects

• 33:22

right it's a super important part as you said of the package in order to sell that that weight and that immersion in

• 33:27

the game and uh there's going to be a lot coming online so i'm you know really excited to see

• 33:35

what we have in store for for that so yeah yeah i don't know if we'll show it on stream but we've

• 33:42

we're building a sort of a singular tool that all of the teams can use to build abilities and tweak them uh

• 33:49

sound of their sound effects visual effects animation design engineering all using the same

• 33:56

tool gr grounded in animation you know to build these abilities

• 34:03

yeah absolutely another component um adam which um you guys worked on is camera controls

• 34:10

and adding um talk to me a little bit about the the kind of visuals that are provided

• 34:16

through these cam additional camera controls for abilities and combat yeah so i mean the word of the day has been

• 34:23

impact and weight right and a lot of that is sold through what the the player sees you know we didn't want anything to

• 34:29

be uh nauseating or over the top and you know certainly people can adjust it in option settings but we wanted something

• 34:36

that would uh that would sell a lot of the weight um without you know being too over the top

• 34:42

and two sort of cartoonish right and so we implemented a few different camera effects you know things like uh

• 34:49

camera shake radio blur and a few other uh things involved and really tried to

• 34:55

maximize uh you know our bang for the buck with those to to sell the weight of these

• 35:01

attacks and it really adds a lot uh especially um i've noticed a lot of how

• 35:06

your peripheral uh interprets the the way that they attack really sells it for me as a player

• 35:12

so that's something we've been focusing on and it's it's made huge improvements to the uh feeling of these attacks

• 35:20

yeah absolutely i love it um so

• 35:26

looking forward as we continue to flesh out both the

• 35:32

medium melee weapons and we'll be showcasing our ranged weapons in combat

• 35:37

in a future stream we're also going to be talking a little bit about and showcasing

• 35:43

uh which you guys got a little sneak peek on a few abilities um some class kits and the ability systems as a whole

• 35:49

um and what we're able to accomplish for alpha 2. um of course you know we promised at the beginning of this year

• 35:56

that you guys would be getting some pretty exciting showcases of all the work that's being

• 36:01

done on the project towards alpha 2. you got that with the character creator you got that with the seasons and weather

• 36:06

systems now you're starting to get a little bit of touch on the combat side and i know that there's a lot of stuff

• 36:13

that design has been prepping uh around you know the work that's been done on these class kits and and the the

• 36:18

different archetypes that are gonna be playable across alpha two um but there's a lot in store and there's a lot of

• 36:24

functionality that the engineering team has provided our designers when it comes to

• 36:29

both the functionality of certain types of abilities as well as the synergies possible between them you want to talk a

• 36:36

little bit adam keenan and trout about what's possible given our ability

• 36:41

toolkit definitely yeah um i mean we've

• 36:46

so this whole you know prototype process has been kind of you know two steps one of those steps was what you know adam

• 36:53

and keenan were talking about a bit there with you know their hypotheses on you know what makes good

• 37:00

feeling combat and they've done a great job on that but the other side of that was also just you know

• 37:06

coming up with these almost mock class kits um and you know the idea was this might not be the final

• 37:13

class but there will be things that we can take from it that would like and then get rid of that we don't like unless we make something

• 37:21

some um peeks of that already from the assassin in the previous stream and now you're seeing

• 37:26

something from weapon master that was the other one to experiment with and contrast these

• 37:33

different types of combat and um what i was kind of going for here uh was

• 37:39

you know getting last energies in place where you know maybe you know for example you've got a

• 37:45

thing that if you kill someone with one of your other abilities it'll reset the cooldown on one of these abilities and there was a lot of that kind of stuff

• 37:52

going on in this kit whereas there wasn't so much of that interaction in the kits and you

• 37:57

know the previous outfit it was an area that we felt could really improve and the good thing about that

• 38:03

whole exercise that we did is we came up with a lot of cool abilities you're not seeing them all here but

• 38:10

they you know what it really did for us is it developed our tools because we realized oh we can't do this or we can't do that

• 38:17

and so like the designers and adam and keenan uh here would kind of go back and forth and say like

• 38:23

you know designers need to be able to do this particular thing that we can't currently do and then they would take that and

• 38:29

make it

• 38:42

oh i was just going to sort of build on trad's point like all of these exercises

• 38:47

or throughout all of these exercises we're very careful on the ability system side to make sure that

• 38:54

when we're adding something new we make it as modular as possible we really want to think of these abilities as being

• 39:00

made out of like lego pieces not being sort of like molded from a

• 39:05

single block of clay so whenever we are trying something and we build something new that's a new piece that we can have

• 39:12

that we have to explore and combine with all of the other pieces that we've already made absolutely um the other

• 39:17

thing that's important and is important probably for players to understand with regards to alpha 2 is

• 39:23

that this is another testing ground right alpha 2 is a test and in alpha 2 we're going to represent

• 39:29

components of the class kits and the ability system that may not make it to launch but it is a perfect area for us

• 39:36

to kind of get both player feedback as well as for us to log data uh around its usage

• 39:43

its impact its um you know feasibility as essentially a component of our class kits right we're going to be

• 39:48

experimenting a lot with regards to that for alpha 2.

• 39:54

so it's very exciting um oh definitely we're just getting started yes absolutely well guys this

• 40:01

has been a fun stream i think um i really enjoy

• 40:06

obviously talking about this stuff and showcasing the hard work that you guys are doing everybody on the team is doing across um everyone that makes combat a a

• 40:14

fun and tactile thing for us to play with um there's a lot that goes into it but

• 40:19

i think the team is hitting it out of the park with these showcases as we show you know essentially what our quality

• 40:25

bar is for Ashes of Creation so i want to thank everybody for tuning in and watching

• 40:31

please make sure it's very important that you guys give feedback uh with regards to kind of what you saw today

• 40:37

you know it is always something that we are iterating upon but generally based on

• 40:44

what feedback we already received out of alpha one and the pursuits that our engineering side as well as our design

• 40:50

side have been have been examining and and playing around with we feel really

• 40:55

confident in this approach for the basic weapon melee attacks um but we want to

• 41:00

hear your guys's feedback what you thought of today so make sure to comment both in the youtube section as well as on stream on our forums on

• 41:06

our discord connect everywhere we value your feedback very much it is an important part of creating ashes of

• 41:11

creation and remember this is a work in progress this is something that we are still expanding upon something that we

• 41:18

are still improving um it is never truly finished but of course uh it is getting

• 41:23

close to to alpha 2 ready um thank you guys again for tuning in uh adam keenan

• 41:29

trad thank you guys for being a part of it always appreciate the insight and the talents you guys bring to ashes of

• 41:34

creation as a as a game we're very happy to have you guys so everybody in chat give a give hearts for

• 41:41

our awesome guests today and i will see you guys back on stream

• 41:47

[Music]

• 41:55

hello well there it is the we have ripped the band-aid off

• 42:03

yeah so to speak um but i feel like from reading the chat i do have some

• 42:09

questions that you all uh posted but it seems overwhelmingly like most of you like it there is a little

• 42:15

feedback here and there and if you have feedback for us i believe right now if uh vaccinar is uh

• 42:23

following along we will have a weapon a basic weapon attack combo feedback thread posted to our forums yeah and i

• 42:29

just want to kind of comment real quick so the biggest takeaway that you can ask

• 42:34

yourself after watching that if you're a member of our core audience who's been following development

• 42:41

for the last few years is the direction

• 42:47

and the improvements that you've seen here the right direction is that a positive

• 42:55

growth from what you have seen last year versus versus to where you are seeing it now

• 43:02

and if that is the the answer that you give then what that means from a development

• 43:09

perspective is that it will continue to get better on that path

• 43:15

and the reason for that is we are taking our time when it comes to the quality of this game

• 43:20

and what that means is the additional bells and whistles the the more

• 43:26

polished look of animations and visual effects and as we expand on this idea of combat with

• 43:34

class rotations all this stuff is going to get is going to come together

• 43:39

into a very tactile kinetic style of combat and that's our

• 43:45

goal right and this this gives you a look at what that directional change has been

• 43:51

and if you like that directional change realize we're not even in alpha 2 yet and this is where the combat's at so by

• 43:58

the time we're close to launch you got to project out what that

• 44:03

expectation is going to be [Laughter] games take time to make um yeah especially at the

• 44:10

quality level yes especially good games look anybody can rush a game out the door right we

• 44:17

see and i'm not talking negatively about like other game companies or publishers or

• 44:24

whatever but the truth of the matter is is that there are deadlines that that projects have and

• 44:29

whether something is finished or not sometimes that deadline doesn't move and that can result in the experiences

• 44:37

that we've shared as a mmorpg community in other games the benefit or the luxury

• 44:43

i would say excuse me the luxury that we have on Ashes of Creation is our goal is to create something and

• 44:50

not ship it until it's ready and you as a community are part of the

• 44:55

litmus test in determining when something is ready because our process is transparent we're showing you monthly

• 45:03

updates so your feedback on something whether or not it looks good or it feels good is this ready

• 45:09

to be launched into an alpha 2 or to launch totally that's something that is a question that gets asked to you guys

• 45:16

right and to us and i think that's that's the important reciprocal relationship that we as developers have

• 45:22

with with the community and that's why we ask for your feedback that's why we ask for you to get engaged that's why we ask for you to comment on

• 45:28

forums on reddit on whatever right that is a very important part of our process and it's something i think that is not

• 45:35

unique to to intrepid but it is something that is not done overwhelmingly across a lot of projects

• 45:41

and so we want to capitalize that as much as possible and that's why the decision to release small trunks excuse

• 45:46

me small chunks of the combat changes that have been uh presented and do it earlier uh was a good one to make and

• 45:53

and i'm glad to see the response in the community i think we were nervous but i think we're nervous every time

• 45:59

we never you know we always hope that you like what we should share our baby yeah but um at the same time we know

• 46:06

it's a work in progress um and not everyone else can understand that so it's

• 46:11

you know sharing our journey but there were some questions in chat i would like to try to get to some of those we do have a q a as well that we'll pull from

• 46:18

the forums from previous questions that were already pulled but um these ones are specifically questions that people

• 46:24

were asking whilst watching and the video playing in the background as well uh so just fine wanted to know can you

• 46:30

have steven clarify what they meant by this is the upper bound for agency versus weight does that mean they want

• 46:37

to go uh more heavy than this or does it mean there is some room for improvement there

• 46:44

um well there's always room for improvement as i said it's a work in progress so we're going to be improving on those things however what's meant by

• 46:49

the upper range of agency is there is a balance between player motion

• 46:55

and agency as we call it right and weapon weightedness that

• 47:01

almost locked in place rooted position the heavier the weapon is you know the

• 47:06

more restrictions you want to place on that player agency to showcase the

• 47:12

rooted effect that weight that heavyweight kind of aspect and so what we've done by presenting you guys with

• 47:20

both the dual daggers and the two-handed weapon is we've kind of shown the range between

• 47:26

that complete player agency a player agency in the light weapon attacks that's the dual daggers and the

• 47:32

maximum range of of rootedness or weightedness that's present on the

• 47:38

two-handed weapon and that's the spectrum in which our basic melee combat will exist within so if there are medium

• 47:46

weapon groups that exist in between there it's going to be somewhere in between that that spectrum

• 47:51

all right and then these next two questions are both in regards to ui and i already know the answer so that's why i'm mixing them

• 47:57

together uh one is in regards to and this was a lot of people so i didn't

• 48:03

quote a specific person there was a lot of people asking about this um but can they change the color of the text of the

• 48:08

floating text et cetera customize it in any way like pick which one which color they want for crits etc and then snooki

• 48:14

x or snucky ass will there be any hp indicators and

• 48:20

things of that sort because they didn't see that in this yeah just just real quick so um when it

• 48:25

comes to ui um we have a very talented ui team by the way in love with all the work that

• 48:31

they've been doing so far and we are all in agreement that player

• 48:38

customization options are paramount when it comes to ui right um

• 48:44

that is a very subjective thing that we've all become you know our own

• 48:49

flavors we like out of certain components of the ui and so instead of trying to force down

• 48:54

the throat of our players a specific approach to ui why do that when we can

• 49:00

uh develop options and customization that the players can influence

• 49:05

themselves that includes color compositions it includes uh includes

• 49:10

text sizes includes bolded it includes options of which informations you're choosing to display scaling

• 49:17

absolutely like that is our approach from a ui's perspective 100 yeah and as a content creator myself

• 49:24

being able to customize the ui to match my overlays and things like that will be amazing and i've appreciated that in

• 49:30

other games so we're definitely keeping those things in mind for y'all uh this next question

• 49:36

there's actually two parts to it one is from one person one from the other but they kind of tie in um about the same

• 49:42

topic so this is from the shiniest bubble wants to know i wonder how much moving the camera slash targeter affects

• 49:49

hitboxes it seems like movement might be moving the hitbox during the attack and then mass 7 wants to know

• 49:56

you should not be able to move that fast while swinging uh that's their kind of perspective of it so yeah i know it's

• 50:03

all kind of tie-in well it's important to note that there's a balance in the game design between um your movement

• 50:10

speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent when you have a game

• 50:15

that is both pve centric as well as pvp centric you have to make sure that

• 50:21

combat is blended for both approaches and we can always run into problems

• 50:26

where if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed that has an effect on how we expect player versus

• 50:33

player engagements to interact and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the

• 50:40

target of an attack and as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the

• 50:46

player who is doing the attacking as well so we want it to be relatively free form you to stay with each other your

• 50:52

opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action we have to then

• 50:58

implement some type of snare or slow or um you know cc effect

• 51:04

essentially on your opposing target and that's not the approach we want to take for for pvp

• 51:10

cool um this kind of is like a segway from that which is uh from

• 51:17

hadookai and ellit and they both want to know what are so will we have some avoidable attacks uh is there any chance

• 51:23

for weaving or animation canceling oh absolutely yeah yeah there there are

• 51:29

intended dodges and gap closers and um you know mitigating um uh increased

• 51:35

mitigation effects for incoming damage um that are situationally reactively relevant right so you see an animation

• 51:42

windup that's a telegraph on what's coming and then you have response actions that you can take as a result of

• 51:48

that in order to dodge weave move do whatever right it is a it is both a combination of what your rotation is but

• 51:56

also how you have reaction abilities ready to go that you save for certain

• 52:02

circumstances that are important all right and then the next one here is from

• 52:08

falcath and they want to know what about camera how far we'll be able to zoom out what will be like the min max of zooming in and zooming out i don't know if you

• 52:14

have exact answers on that well i mean i personally tend to be a fan of having

• 52:21

maximum zoom capabilities right i want to be able to see what's going on around me that's my experience as a raid leader

• 52:29

as a shock caller as a guild leader i kind of want to have the perspective of the battlefield and i know a lot of

• 52:34

other players like that too so again leaning into the player option side here

• 52:40

allowing a pretty pretty significant distance on the zoom is something we're going to be going for

• 52:46

and you can kind of see that as i zoom out in different sections of this combat it's pretty high up so um stephen does

• 52:51

like to be zoomed out really far and i've gotten a lot of feedback that's like don't zoom out that far

• 52:58

it's another subjective thing but whenever you have that that preferential or that subjective uh aspect give them

• 53:04

the option give the players the option let them choose if they want to be zoomed out you know very far or if they

• 53:10

want to be close in i mean how many times i've played a game where they have some type of mod that you can install that gives you a higher zoom distance

• 53:16

and i'm just thinking to myself why do i have to have the mod why can't i just have this choice and that was a question

• 53:22

we've already stated we don't want to allow mods but if there are things in customization that you want please send

• 53:27

us that feedback because we want to implement the we want to implement those things we want them to be native to the game and for you to be able to customize

• 53:33

them um so the next question here is from uh shaksimity and they would like to know

• 53:40

will different races have different animation for combat sorry meyers

• 53:45

well they won't what we try to do in order to to limit

• 53:51

excuse me there's a lot of stuff to make in an mmo so i don't know you know i've often said this and uh you know

• 53:58

um making games is hard making an mmorpg is probably the most difficult type of game you can make and our mmorpg is a

• 54:05

particularly ambitious one when it comes to assets when it comes to animations we have to author um you know we want to

• 54:11

save as much as we can in certain places while also keeping the level of um of quality that we want to hit so

• 54:19

one of the ways we do that from an animation perspective is we're not going to be having i think unique combat

• 54:25

animations however we will have unique non-combat animations such as your idol

• 54:30

your walk your run cycle things that the combat attacks do not have to blend back into right those combat attacks

• 54:37

animation-wise blend back into the combat idol stance and then when you're out of that combat idol stance into a

• 54:42

non-combat idol stance that's when you take the unique poses or the unique walk

• 54:47

and run cycle just to give it you know character flavor for what the specific race you're playing is and that's how we

• 54:54

mitigate the bloat that would come if we had to make all of our combat animations idle as soon as you blend back into the

• 55:00

combat idol stance if that was a unique one i mean one one of those swings like they

• 55:06

have to make so many different animations just for that one swing because of like all the options that you could choose go left right straight

• 55:12

backwards like it's not just one animation that they make for one swing it's uh it's a lot of transitions that

• 55:19

they have to make from just that one swing absolutely um we would be here forever if we answered

• 55:25

everyone's questions so i'm going to ask this last one and then we're going to transition because we still have more stuff to show you all

• 55:31

um so first or so this last one is from how to lose and i know you asked a very big

• 55:36

question but i'm going to consolidate it and their basic question is that we had stated that we were going to allow

• 55:42

people to use like any uh class combination which would be both your archetypes together being able to use

• 55:49

any weapon do we see problems that could occur with that for instance like a bow tank or an orb tank or things like

• 55:56

will there be some strangeness there or are there problems that you first are foreseeing in the future is the question

• 56:02

do i foresee problems or strangeness from allowing player characters to choose the types of well it's more will

• 56:08

there be any functions to discourage people from using certain combinations or oh we're giving a lot of flex

• 56:15

we're giving a lot of flexibility to the crafters in our game they get to help define the stat block that a particular

• 56:21

item weapon or gear has and that stat block can be relevant to any particular class or arc or arc type combination um

• 56:30

so in that sense the idea is no not to see any strangeness there or not to see any um you know

• 56:37

elements that would dissuade a person from that that customization perspective

• 56:42

okay uh so you know we'll let you know if things change from there and of course just a reminder we do have a

• 56:48

feedback thread up if you have any thoughts which from the chat it seems like you all have a lot of thoughts head

• 56:53

on over to our forumsforms.com our forums dot ask.com i like it

• 57:00

i wonder where that goes have a spike in traffic um and toss us your feedback it's in the

• 57:06

general uh feedback thread for this live stream so uh we would love for for your

• 57:11

thoughts and we will consolidate those for our design team and with that we shall move on to some really cool stuff

Character Art Update

• 57:18

uh which is our character art team's goodness and you're gonna go straight into seeing the dread crawler

• 57:26

which was done by danny this is one of our burrower demons and it's super cool

• 57:33

yes it is very cool so this guy is a boss that you'll be seeing in alpha 2. he lives in the desert biome but his

• 57:42

um story is during the fall and i guess i won't expand too much on it but

• 57:47

during the fall he was essentially a war machine he was used by the ancients to

• 57:53

help defeat certain cities in the world and he did so by both burrowing under

• 57:59

those cities and coming out from the ground from within causing chaos while the outside forces would attack that

• 58:06

city or he could be used as a war machine to just demolish the walls and break through for those ancient legions

• 58:13

um to make their way in all right well you get a little lore too

• 58:18

yeah a little snack uh oh we have a little turntable of him as well so you can see the 3d

• 58:25

i love that i love the interactions that danny has on the top of his head the little dude that pops out and his little

• 58:32

projectile that he shoots yeah you can see it sticking out there if you're wondering what that little piece is

• 58:38

it is pretty cool it is very very neat the little touch as everyone puts on things i mean it goes

• 58:44

back to like the passion that we have everyone is super passionate about their expertise and their field and you just

• 58:51

see that in the work that they put out it's pretty amazing uh

• 58:56

stephen has mantled together uh quite a group of people yes we have pulled together

• 59:03

some very talented people for sure and this one is the mantle of radiant grove

• 59:09

we actually have a few different variants of this as well like we said these

• 59:14

are going to be used for npcs or you can see the weapons here as well um in the world so

• 59:21

uh one of our developers was like maybe we could make it so the npc based on the

• 59:26

season would change the leaves would change color i think is cool i'm manifesting that

• 59:35

or some of the leaves just fall off as you're running and you just have like a little trickling of leads behind you

• 59:41

sorry jim your team we're just gonna keep adding more things to your team they already have that effect for the

• 59:46

trees we could just apply it to the costume well i think you'd have to have a smaller amount you don't want like a

• 59:53

whole tree falling down of course they adjust it but that's a slider

• 59:58

it's just a slider jim it is a slider uh and then next up we have our curse

• 1:00:04

charger so this is kind of what i wanted to showcase is like this is the cursed charger that you all have seen um this

• 1:00:10

is a little touched up better if they've been touching up all of the creatures but here are the variants that you're

• 1:00:16

seeing come from them so it looks quite different if you've watched a lot of our other streams or seen actually our

• 1:00:22

in-game footage you've probably seen a lot of variants as well but i just wanted to kind of show that a little bit

• 1:00:27

more for you guys um especially for the folks who don't maybe follow every every little post that we put out there

• 1:00:34

um but yeah uh yeah ginseng

• 1:00:39

took these and made them even better if that's possible she's just amazing

• 1:00:45

um and eli did the mantle of the radiant grove yes and last but not least you did see

• 1:00:51

the pirae in game but we have some updated images if you follow somebody some booties get ready for some booties

• 1:00:58

if you follow us on social uh yeah so i tried to post these on a discord to our pi people and it was not letting me

• 1:01:06

because it was getting flagged for i was getting flagged for nudity

• 1:01:11

but uh yeah they look amazing we've taken a lot of your guys's feedback uh we still have

• 1:01:17

the branchlers even though some people don't like them but you know there are other races that you can choose from if you don't like branch

• 1:01:23

layers and and as we demonstrated by the way i know you guys are going to be asking this question

• 1:01:29

yeah we demonstrate it in the character creator there are sliders we do have

• 1:01:35

sliders that is it is a thing yeah and i'll show you the this will prompt

• 1:01:42

the slider question i'm sure by the way not just one not just one set of sliders

• 1:01:47

this is an equal opportunity sliders there's equal opportunity sliders so let's be clear on that i wish i could

• 1:01:54

like zoom in on your face when you said that um but yeah so we

• 1:01:59

we have taken your feedback and uh we've made some adjustments and of course i i believe um if you follow

• 1:02:06

us on social stephen actually teased these already and uh vaknar did update that thread the pirate thread with the

• 1:02:13

new images so if you have any feedback on them uh you can go over to that thread and if we see an uh like a large

• 1:02:20

amount of differences in the feedback we'll definitely relay that over to our development team but we've already sent

• 1:02:26

them over a report and that's why they've made the changes that they have made um and then this is the mail version

• 1:02:33

i was going to say do we not have the mail one yeah we have the mail just you know going equal opportunity

• 1:02:39

equal opportunity maggie well sometimes we only show one over the other people that's true

• 1:02:47

know and women's bodies tend to be very controversial so we usually start with

• 1:02:53

uh some of them yeah people have thought some feedback on how

• 1:02:59

they should be you know portrayed so that's true um but i think that you know we'll we'll provide you guys with

• 1:03:05

sliders that you can adjust based on the different races and how far along those scales we want to showcase and if you

• 1:03:12

haven't seen our character creator like if you're new to Ashes of Creation and this is your first stream that you're

• 1:03:17

watching oh my gosh go to our youtube channel go search in the little search box character creator and go watch our

• 1:03:23

character creator our team is like that's not even our character creator finished so let's go look at it

• 1:03:29

it is phenomenal absolutely i'll play the 3d version

• 1:03:36

and then we will get to our q a and wrap up the stream actually do you

Studio Update

• 1:03:41

have any studio updates that you want to talk about uh hiring is going great um

• 1:03:48

we had i think like uh i think we had almost 400

• 1:03:53

applicants last month and we accepted i think 14 of them

• 1:04:00

um so we are we are doing a great job on that front

• 1:04:05

very excited with the talent that we have that's joining the team we are continuing to grow

• 1:04:11

so things are going really good on that front sweet sweet yeah and i think with that we'll pop

Outro and Q&A

• 1:04:18

over to our q a segment if you're good with that stephen

• 1:04:23

absolutely all right now play the video in the background um so we have something to look at will we

• 1:04:30

go through them uh so our first question here is from north the mage and el

• 1:04:36

windrill and they both wanted to know about naval mechanics are there any plans to have wind in sailing and i know

• 1:04:42

we've talked about this topic a little bit but we haven't gone into super depth with it uh yes there is wind um wind is

• 1:04:50

an important component of the open sea quote-unquote open seas so that's all non-coastal areas um

• 1:04:56

and that open sea based on those the composition of wind and the open sea um

• 1:05:04

will influence the speed uh directionally that a boat is traveling in um

• 1:05:10

and and how that speed gets influenced by the winds uh that can be an important strategic component when discussing like

• 1:05:16

timing for trade runs or timing for for you know what your location is in

• 1:05:22

relationship to your target out at the open sea um and it just creates a little

• 1:05:27

bit more fluid and dynamic experience when you're at sea that like you're not in this cove and you always you know

• 1:05:34

know how you're going to interact with the open water and the speed that you have so you can predict accurately

• 1:05:40

you know what your intercept rate or distance will look like if that is a variable and that variable changes right

• 1:05:47

then you have to adapt your strategies for that variable and i think that is a very healthy and keeps things fresh from

• 1:05:54

a perspective of a cat and mouse game that usually occurs between ships in the open waters

• 1:05:59

i'm excited for naval combat yes it's gonna be fun uh next up we have kiwi

• 1:06:06

asking about gear customization which you know we do have a thread about it uh so

• 1:06:11

with the most recent dub discussion going on what are slash were your plans so far with color and dye system and the

• 1:06:18

color system so one of the things that we want to do again talking about player agency is we

• 1:06:23

want to give them the ability to kind of change the appearance of their armor sets that they're wearing and the way

• 1:06:28

we've approached the dye solution is through a channeled system we have a two channel dye system where the first

• 1:06:35

channel is a lower grade die that it has influence over between 10 to 20 percent of your overall armor appearance and

• 1:06:42

then the second channel die is a higher tier die that you have to acquire and by doing so you can influence the remaining

• 1:06:48

thirty percent up to thirty percent of that armor appearance so up to a total of fifty percent influence that can

• 1:06:54

occur across all the pieces that you wear now one unique approach to the way we're doing this dye system is we're not

• 1:07:00

allowing individual dyes to be applied on individual items but instead we keep

• 1:07:06

a cohesion across the set by applying that dye channel to your character and

• 1:07:12

when you equip a piece with your overall character it will assume that die channel from your paper doll so you

• 1:07:18

apply the dies to your character and when you equip a piece of item it will take that uh die and it will influence

• 1:07:25

the channel over that particular piece so that it comes into alignment and what the reason that we're doing that is

• 1:07:32

there's a lot of options with regards to customization for your character appearance whether it be through transmog through costumes through mixing

• 1:07:39

and matching sets and pieces that you can wear right and what we want to avoid is the rainbow effect where you know

• 1:07:45

these pieces do not look good together and it creates the clown that's walking

• 1:07:51

down the street and it's a bit comical to see the clown that's walking down the street so we've unified it through the

• 1:07:56

die channel system that applies across your paper doll all right there's definitely some

• 1:08:02

thoughts on that so our next question is from kraken and they would like to know about freeholds

• 1:08:09

do you expect most players who want a freehold to be able to get one or will they be prestige symbols owned by a

• 1:08:16

small fraction of players um that is a very good question i think

• 1:08:21

the answer is that if a player wants to achieve a freehold they can achieve the freehold however

• 1:08:27

the amount of effort resources and time that's required in order to achieve that that freehold is a

• 1:08:34

large amount it is something that is a a monumental achievement for you to to get

• 1:08:40

that freehold and the reason why is because freeholds tie in very heavily to the processing

• 1:08:45

uh artisanship aspect some processing can be done in nodes but the best

• 1:08:52

processing is done on freeholds and we want to make sure that there's a little bit of a throttle or gate on

• 1:08:59

the amount of effort that's necessary to achieve that influence over the processing market um and and that means

• 1:09:05

that it it takes some time to achieve it so um ultimately to answer that question anybody who puts the effort in should be

• 1:09:12

able to achieve a freehold but it is going to be a major achievement for that character

• 1:09:17

all right and our next question is from nixa and phantom and phantom x

• 1:09:22

and they went and by the way i just want to make sure just want to make sure we're clear that a freehold is one of three types of houses

• 1:09:29

right that you can own so just because the freehold is very difficult to attain doesn't mean that you don't have a space

• 1:09:35

for housing and furniture that you can achieve through our apartment system or an inn or the static in node housing

• 1:09:43

those are alternate methods as well uh but they do not have that aspect of the best processing is done there the best

• 1:09:50

processing is done on the freehold and being able to customize the outside of your what your freehold looks like the

• 1:09:56

static housing the static yeah apartment you can't you can customize the interior but the static housing and nodes they do

• 1:10:01

have an outside area that you can customize yeah i was referring to the apartment yeah

• 1:10:06

and specific absolutely and specifically on the freehold one thing that's unique is the blueprint system right acquiring

• 1:10:13

specific buildings that you can build ancillary to your home on the freehold as well

• 1:10:19

yeah and the next question is regarding the weather system which we showcased will there be flooding caused by heavy

• 1:10:26

rain snow melting or storms with rivers rising and rougher waters on the ocean

• 1:10:31

or the opposite with droughts um yeah i think that that we haven't done

• 1:10:37

any work on that yet but in the weather and seasonal systems we have talked about the potential of

• 1:10:44

including flooding um as well i mean the the arid or desert type climate system

• 1:10:50

that can be applied relatively with these the flooding can be a little bit more tricky from a tech art perspective

• 1:10:56

but it is something that we have discussed having certain submerged areas that flex between seasons of being

• 1:11:03

flooded where it becomes an under underwater environment and having um times where it is a non-water

• 1:11:10

environment for dungeons um that is something that we haven't worked on yet but we have talked about uh wouldn't be

• 1:11:15

present in alpha 2 but it's something we want to uh explain very cool to have like that dynamic combat we're like oh

• 1:11:21

during the winter you want to go there for this and during the summer you want to go and also on that side uh you know we

• 1:11:29

have shown how our tide system works too so like oh yeah the tides yeah if you're interested in seeing that too

• 1:11:35

um and we have from baumanizer they want to know about game settings will dense

• 1:11:41

foliage be baseline in the game or will people turn them off

• 1:11:46

in the settings to minimize pvp efficiency i think hiding in business we will not allow we yeah we will not allow

• 1:11:52

players to to adjust uh the density of foliage actors in the world um that will be

• 1:11:59

universal um so you know it's going to be of course there are going to be areas that are

• 1:12:05

more dense than others it's meant to be part of the a part of the world that players can utilize for

• 1:12:11

certain purposes like hiding in uh for pvp however there will be collision with those foliage actors and the player

• 1:12:18

capsule so as you might see that bush moving and think huh that's odd that doesn't look like wind there's must be

• 1:12:24

something there um and and that's the kind of immersion that we want right yeah we're and like when you're walking

• 1:12:30

in the grass if things move and you're like what's going on over there right that would be cool um as a fellow pvp or that'd be fun uh

• 1:12:38

triol wants to know about weapons well equipping different weapons change your skill set and if so

• 1:12:44

how will you balance that in regards to class identity as in having character be defined by their equipment base as

• 1:12:51

opposed to their class i i am not a fan of in mmorpgs um having equipment-based skill

• 1:12:59

sets um i think that you have class-focused uh skill kits um

• 1:13:04

and that if i know your class i know what you have access to i might not necessarily know what you've specced into um but i am sorry i i strongly

• 1:13:12

dislike the idea of tying the skills into the weapon i think it's unique i think it's novel it's just not for me

• 1:13:18

necessarily our approach is not going to be providing skills through weapons uh it's going to be providing skills

• 1:13:23

through classes and then we have hamlet who wants to know about bugs and exploits are you

• 1:13:28

guys open to server rollbacks in the event of an unforeseen bug or dupe that would introduce an economy-breaking

• 1:13:36

amount of currency into the absolute economy server rollbacks are emergency scenarios um

• 1:13:42

[Music] are we open to taking emergency action if it's necessary yes of course we're

• 1:13:48

open to doing whatever is necessary to address unforeseen problems um but it should be a last a last-ditch option i

• 1:13:55

was gonna say that too like from my perspective this is definitely my forte um you know if we had something like that

• 1:14:00

we would remove the dupe anybody who exploited that you know we'll have lots of tools we would have precautions for

• 1:14:06

those things yeah yeah exactly and we can remove we can easily remove those uh

• 1:14:12

you know those pieces of economy from the system not just pieces those people yeah

• 1:14:18

like i was saying there will be repercussions for the exploiters but i think sometimes there's a dupe and you don't know that it's happening right

• 1:14:23

like you're just like oh i accidentally did something oh legendary items in my inventory how did

• 1:14:30

this get here i have no clue if it was over and over you know what you're doing but if someone just did it once and was

• 1:14:36

like whoa and reported it we just remove it right like i think there's 10 billion gold how

• 1:14:41

did this get into my inventory there's a difference in exploiting versus someone happens dancing upon something and

• 1:14:46

reporting it so if you encounter something please report it that way there's no action on your

• 1:14:52

account uh golid would like to know about caravans caravan attackers have

• 1:14:58

only the reward of stealing the caravan goods without any risk currently planned according to the wiki since the game is

• 1:15:05

about risk versus reward what is what is the risk you plan to add for caravan attackers

• 1:15:12

well um i mean there is a level of risk that comes with the attacker right we have

• 1:15:18

progression paths that exist for bandits and that exists for defenders and if you choose to opt into a caravan attack you

• 1:15:25

sign up for that attack and you fail that attack it is detrimental to your path of progression down the bandit area

• 1:15:31

right that's one thing two is um you know of course you have uh gear decay

• 1:15:37

you have degradation that can be suffered if you die that is a cost

• 1:15:43

and then you also have a reputation and if your reputation precedes you when you want to make movements of good and

• 1:15:49

transit goods across the world and you see somebody who's doing it and you want to participate as a defender or a

• 1:15:54

participant they might say hey screw you you were just murdering my people last week and i saw that you're like on the

• 1:15:59

top of the bandit list for killing caravans um so you know it has repercussions in the sense that it locks

• 1:16:05

you out of certain player groups it provides decay to your armor it has deleterious effects on your progression

• 1:16:11

and the attacking uh and the bandit progression of of caravan attacks

• 1:16:17

or defense so there are there are costs there all right um

• 1:16:22

our next question is from spiromancer and they want to know about looting if looting rights are based on a blended

• 1:16:28

tag and damage done system will there be any mechanics in place to ensure roles like tanks and healers have

• 1:16:35

an equal shot even when they haven't dealt as much damage

• 1:16:42

um i think that's the reason for the blended approach um the reason that excuse me

• 1:16:50

the reason that we're doing a a hybrid system between tag and damage done is um for the purposes

• 1:16:57

of those classes who may not be as dps oriented as other classes the tag system

• 1:17:03

you know all classes are going to have a sprinkling of immediate effects of of instantaneous casts and they can use that to tag a target

• 1:17:10

and that'll give them a modifier on the looting right so plus 10 or plus 15 will balance that but it'll give them plus 10

• 1:17:16

to 15 on overall damage done if they tag the target and then their damage will make up the remainder of that percentage

• 1:17:22

um uh completion so if i do 50 damage to a target but someone else has the tag

• 1:17:27

i'm not going to be able to claim that looting right they'll have done the other 50 plus 10 or 15.

• 1:17:34

okay and then our last question is from lithion and they would like to know

• 1:17:40

about artisan gear will gear for artisans be strong enough for a player to defend against an equal level player

• 1:17:47

who is in combat gear gear for artisans um so we actually just had it

• 1:17:54

i actually just had a conversation about the gear for artisans the gear for artisans

• 1:18:00

are going to live alongside your adventuring gear so you will currently the approaches and

• 1:18:06

we'll test this but currently the approach is you'll have artisanship oriented gear this might be beneficial

• 1:18:11

for your gathering it might be beneficial for your processing or crafting or whatever it is right your profession essentially you will craft

• 1:18:17

that gear you will equip that gear it'll live almost as a undergarment slot so to speak and then you can activate that and

• 1:18:24

it will show the appearance if you wish during the activation when you gain the benefit from the from the gear itself

• 1:18:31

and then could disappear um afterwards and go back to your adventuring gear that's like the current approach we're going to play with that a little bit

• 1:18:37

there's some discussion and disagreement on the team about how we do that um but our hopes are um for alpha two we

• 1:18:44

will have i think a couple of sets at least you know we're demonstrating all of the uh artisanship from from

• 1:18:49

gathering to processing to crafting um in limited fashion in alpha 2. um and we

• 1:18:55

want to have that gear present to kind of play with this approach um and then the flip side of this question in case they meant it this way

• 1:19:02

um if you had crafted gear versus gear that you attained through like oh i

• 1:19:08

thought they were talking about like professionals i believe that is but uh just in case that this is the other alternative way that they meant that

• 1:19:14

question uh would how would crafting gear compare to like that of you know

• 1:19:23

crafted gear in the game is the best gear um so i'm going to tell you one thing that i

• 1:19:29

i cannot you know i'll be less inflammatory in my speech

• 1:19:34

one thing that i'm not a fan of is that um you develop a crafting system in a game

• 1:19:41

right and you've spent a lot of time making this from a material and resource perspective all the tables that you can

• 1:19:47

receive all the all the connectivity in the economy and how crafting is associated with the game

• 1:19:52

and then you undermine the crafting entirely by presenting a separate route of gear acquisition that is on par with

• 1:19:59

the graft with the crafting efforts so here you have these people who are acquiring all of the resources getting

• 1:20:04

all the recipes leveling up their professions and then everything they make is less or equal to anything you could

• 1:20:11

just have chosen the easier path of and gone down the questing and received the best gear so what we do focus on is that

• 1:20:18

crafters make the best excuse me the best things um they make the best

• 1:20:24

things thank you very much

• 1:20:29

so they make the best things and the reason they make the best things is because the effort required to make those things is monumental um and that's

• 1:20:37

an important aspect of the whole gameplay loop awesome awesome and i'm pretty sure they meant it the first way but i think

• 1:20:43

having both answers is great for the audience and with that we're going to wrap up our june update we hope that you

• 1:20:52

all have had an amazing month we definitely have on our end we have so

• 1:20:57

much more to share with you throughout the upcoming months so we hope that you will tune in next month for our july

• 1:21:03

update and um any other final things you want to mention yeah i just want to say

• 1:21:08

last year at the end of last year we promised you that this year would be a banger when it comes to

• 1:21:13

the stuff that we showcase and i i'm i've been very proud of the quality that

• 1:21:19

we've achieved in the showcase of the character creator of the weather systems of the combat direction

• 1:21:24

and i think there's a lot of more a lot more great stuff in store for you guys so i just want to reiterate the most

• 1:21:31

important thing is get registered on our forums go comment give us your feedback

• 1:21:38

the big question is do you like the direction of today's update is it a

• 1:21:43

positive change is it better than where it was right

• 1:21:48

that is what's important give us your experiences give us your feedback do it on our uh on our on our forums or on our

• 1:21:56

reddit or on our youtube wherever you want to do it wherever you feel most comfortable but feel free to get engaged that's the whole reason we do these

• 1:22:02

updates is because one i mean we love showing the work that we do but two we want to elicit that feedback um so

• 1:22:09

that's the important aspect yeah and right now there are quite a few threads up there's a gear color customization

• 1:22:15

dev discussion and our basic weapon melee attack combos both of those feedback threads

• 1:22:21

are up please give us feedback on them also just as a reminder our opulent negotiations cause

• 1:22:27

negotiations cosmetics will be swapped over on july 13th so if you want to grab

• 1:22:32

those grab those by 11am and of course thank you to everyone who tuned in live if you're watching this on youtube we

• 1:22:38

super duper appreciate you as well and um you know we hope that you all stay healthy and safe and this video will be

• 1:22:45

up on youtube as well as we will release the uh potentially the combat video as well

• 1:22:51

uh we'll be discussing yeah i think we'll do that we'll do that right after the stream it'll be in 4k so you guys can head over to youtube take a look

• 1:22:56

there and it's 4k gloriness yes and we will post that to all our social channels uh as well and of course you

• 1:23:02

know this those will uploaded to youtube head on over to our youtube don't forget on the dev update if you leave us a

• 1:23:09

comment and uh subscribe to our channel next month you could be spotlighted as our lucky winner

• 1:23:16

and we might answer your question or talk about your comment um and with that we hope to see

• 1:23:22

you over on our twitter facebook instagram discord snapchat whatever social platform you

• 1:23:28

prefer we are there all the time we are interacting with you guys on a daily basis so please come hang out with us

• 1:23:33

and tell us all the things and your thoughts and we will see you now do we have a do just i was just no never mind sorry

• 1:23:40

go ahead all right i'm like wow where's going bye everybody have an awesome weekend

• 1:23:47

have a good weekend [Music]