Talk:2023-02-24 Livestream

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Intro

• 00:00

Hello everyone and welcome to our glorious February development update for Ashes of Creation.

• 00:21

We hope that you've been having a wonderful and lovely month.

• 00:25

If you haven't been following us, we did release a really cute calendar with lots of lovely

• 00:30

things.

• 00:31

Oh yeah, that was so cool.

• 00:33

Yeah.

• 00:34

I loved the little calendar.

• 00:36

Peter came up with the concept and I think Mike Vecchio was the one who put it together.

• 00:43

So social media and graphics team.

• 00:46

Like we always say, we have a different team that handles community stuff versus the lovely

• 00:51

development team that's rocking and rolling on the dev side.

• 00:55

Because I did notice some comments that were like, why are you guys working on this when

• 00:59

you should be working on the game?

• 01:00

Like they're different people.

• 01:01

Yes, there's a lot of people contributing.

• 01:07

Absolutely.

• 01:08

Yeah.

• 01:09

And our team is always trying to make sure that you guys have cool stuff and you get

• 01:12

to see all the things on the social media and things of that sort.

• 01:15

If you aren't able to keep up with us at every moment.

• 01:21

It was the month of love with the Valentine's day.

• 01:23

We had a little guess thing that Margaret did with the studio.

• 01:30

You put a bunch of candies in this heart-shaped vase and then you told everyone to guess.

• 01:39

We had a bunch of winners, didn't we?

• 01:42

Yeah.

• 01:43

I tried to use heart-shaped jelly beans because this is how nerdy our engineers are.

• 01:49

They're like, well, I know how much a jelly bean weighs.

• 01:52

They're like trying to math it out to guess.

• 01:54

It was really funny.

• 01:55

There were some artists that wanted to render actually the size of the heart-shaped in a

• 02:01

3D model, I think.

• 02:02

I heard.

• 02:03

It's too fun.

• 02:04

But yeah, I had like three different colors of jelly beans.

• 02:09

And so they guessed the overall and then each of the different colored jelly beans and the

• 02:13

two closest to each of them prices right style.

• 02:16

So you can't go over the guess.

• 02:18

I know.

• 02:19

I can announce them if you want.

• 02:21

It's more internal stuff.

• 02:23

Actually, afterwards when I found out kind of the prize and whatnot, I suggested that

• 02:29

the studio should have collaborated on all guessing one so that everyone would have tied

• 02:33

for first place and it would just been a studio wide pizza party.

• 02:36

Oh, see, next time you guys, he's letting us gamify it.

• 02:40

You're going to get yourself into trouble with that.

• 02:42

I'm not letting.

• 02:44

It's a game studio.

• 02:45

I'm surprised no designer said, hey, we should do this.

• 02:48

But yeah, Cody Yamamoto, because we have multiple Cody's, Trad Roy and Kyle Grossman and Cameron

• 02:57

and Jason Glenn and Mitch Evans and Matthew Lim all won.

• 03:00

So those were our winners, the closest guessers.

• 03:03

And the only person who guessed like spot on, I believe was, let me double check because

• 03:09

I wrote it because only one person guessed spot on number.

• 03:13

Wow.

• 03:14

Cameron got like the red candies exactly the amount, which was 154.

• 03:18

And then Kyle was the closest to getting almost all of them right because he was very close

• 03:23

on all the guesses except for the red ones.

• 03:25

I was like, dang, he was pretty good at like guessing how many were in the jar.

• 03:32

But yeah, it was kind of fun, just fun, just fun, internal stuff.

• 03:35

And then we had little candy, you know, like little candy treat bags for everybody as well.

• 03:39

Oh, that was cool.

• 03:40

We celebrated a little bit with the month of love for funsies and made a little game

• 03:44

out of it because, you know, we're game designers, game folks, game developers.

• 03:49

But with that, of course, we do have a lovely stream for you all today, which is going to

• 03:52

be just to if you've never been here before, down below you can see kind of what the run

• 03:57

of show will be, which we'll be going over reminders quick.

• 04:00

We have a UI update.

• 04:02

We actually had a chat with Colby, who's our UI UX lead or lead UI UX designer, I think

• 04:09

is the actual title.

• 04:12

And Stephen and I had a lovely chat with them and we will be playing that.

• 04:15

Yeah, we noticed.

• 04:16

Some people don't want to do live recordings.

• 04:19

Right.

• 04:20

Well, we noticed that last last month when we were showcasing the tank that there was

• 04:27

a lot of positivity around the direction of the UI styling and the UI windows that you

• 04:34

guys got to get a little sneak peek of.

• 04:36

And so for this month, we thought it would be a really great idea to kind of walk through

• 04:40

what updates are now existing in the UI lands for Ashes of Creation.

• 04:46

And it is it is a pretty in-depth process.

• 04:50

And I think you guys are going to be tickled to kind of learn more about it.

• 04:55

So it was a good conversation.

• 04:57

We've shown the process of how we create other things in the past, but we haven't gone over

• 05:00

necessarily the nitty gritty when it comes to UI.

• 05:04

So we hope that you guys like seeing that.

• 05:06

And we won't do all of all of things like this, but, you know, yes.

• 05:10

And one thing that's nice, one thing I want to make sure, though, as you guys are seeing

• 05:14

some of these windows.

• 05:15

So so the beginning of the kind of discussion is going to be more about the modularity and

• 05:21

the elements of the of the UI.

• 05:24

And then near the end of the conversation, we show some full on system windows.

• 05:30

Some of those are going to be crafting.

• 05:32

Some are going to be a few other things.

• 05:34

Remember, it is very important to remember that the we are still in active development

• 05:39

and what you see on those windows, because I know everyone out there is going to start

• 05:43

expecting and zooming and talking about all the little numbers and and details that live

• 05:49

on these system windows, that everything is subject to change through development.

• 05:55

So take that with a grain of salt.

• 05:58

Yeah.

• 05:59

And we will also be going over some character art.

• 06:02

And there's a little bit of a concept or environment that's part of that as well.

• 06:06

And then we'll do our studio update and questions and answers.

• 06:09

And then we have a little outro that a little teaser about what's to come.

• 06:13

So definitely stay all the way till the end.

• 06:18

But with that, we'll just get right into the quick updates.

Reminders

• 06:23

And first and foremost, we have our YouTube subscriber comment.

• 06:27

So if you'd like your your comments spotlighted, all you have to do is follow our YouTube channel

• 06:32

or subscribe to our YouTube channel and comment on our development update.

• 06:35

So whenever we put this video up, we will be looking to see who folks who are subscribed

• 06:40

to us.

• 06:41

And this comment today is from Fish Toes 8901.

• 06:46

Maybe they're a Tolnar, but they asked, what are your plans for rewarding exploration?

• 06:53

For instance, will there be hidden secret quest lines or possibly secret doors, zones

• 07:00

that give no hints to being to being there?

• 07:03

But if you have a specific class group composition, you can use your synergies to open them up

• 07:09

and then be rewarded with either rare items or even better unique items that are limited

• 07:14

to either only one or very few per server.

• 07:17

We do have artifacts.

• 07:18

Yeah, absolutely.

• 07:20

Boy, their exploration is a huge part of the game.

• 07:25

And there are a lot of systems that are dedicated to rewarding exploration.

• 07:30

I don't know for many of you who have been following for a while now, circa 2018-2019,

• 07:39

we gave a few pre-alpha demonstrations around some utility spells, the ability kind of to

• 07:45

discover hidden tracks or doorways that can only be revealed through a mage's utility

• 07:52

spell of Arcane Eye or something.

• 07:54

And those can reveal passageways that might contain hidden quests.

• 07:59

They definitely grant exploration experience.

• 08:03

There are relics in the world that can only be discovered if you're in a certain location

• 08:08

at a certain time.

• 08:10

There are constellations that can only be seen at a certain time at a certain location.

• 08:16

So it's kind of widespread how exploration can affect many different progression paths

• 08:25

within the game.

• 08:28

And it's not just about kind of visiting an area once and never coming back because timing

• 08:33

matters as well.

• 08:35

So it's part of what makes an MMO an MMO is that immersive feeling, being able to go out

• 08:40

into the world and discover things and have those discoveries impact your gameplay to

• 08:46

a degree.

• 08:48

That's part of creating a holistic world that feels immersive.

• 08:52

So exploration is a very big part of Ashes of Creation and intersects with a lot of different

• 08:57

systems.

• 08:58

Yeah, explore, click things, look around, interact with people and NPCs who you don't

• 09:05

normally see.

• 09:06

There will be things for sure for you to do.

• 09:10

I remember in one game I played, they had these unique achievement, a unique achievement

• 09:18

system where they granted you items for kind of reaching unique locations within the world.

• 09:25

Like if you got to the top of a mountain for the first time, you would unlock a unique

• 09:31

achievement and that would grant you an item that you could then use economically in some

• 09:35

way, shape or form.

• 09:37

And we don't necessarily do that for just reaching certain vistas.

• 09:40

However, there are also treasures that can exist out in the world and maps that you can

• 09:46

find that take you and kind of encourage that exploration where you can reap a reward that

• 09:53

is economic in game.

• 09:56

So that's also another element.

• 09:58

Even in Alpha 1, we had a couple of little jumping puzzles and people who got there found

• 10:02

the treasure chests that were there that had lead in them.

• 10:04

Don't worry, we'll have stuff for y'all.

• 10:07

Tristan loved making those jumping puzzles.

• 10:09

I'm certain they do.

• 10:12

And of course, just a quick reminder of our monthly cosmetic swap over for Songs of the

• 10:16

Goddess that is scheduled for March 8th and we'll have our next set already for you as

• 10:21

well.

• 10:22

And reminder that these are things that we're going to be using for NPCs, creatures, buildings

• 10:26

and stuff like that in the world.

• 10:28

So our goal is to kind of utilize them for design orientatings.

• 10:34

And by the way, I noticed there's a few comments.

• 10:35

I apologize.

• 10:36

I'm not in the studio this week.

• 10:38

I'm actually in Las Vegas again.

• 10:40

There is a yes, there is a convention here for the gaming industry for executives and

• 10:47

kind of the business side of things in Vegas.

• 10:50

And so I'm here for that.

• 10:51

But I'll be returning back to the studio today.

• 10:53

I was just a quick trip.

• 10:54

I was here just a couple days.

• 10:56

Because you just left.

• 10:57

I know.

• 10:58

Like last night, right?

• 10:59

And then you're coming back today.

• 11:01

But yeah, you may see a few of us every once in a while at some of these events for this

• 11:06

year primarily for biz dev stuff.

• 11:08

So but if you see us, say hi.

• 11:11

Yeah, and if you're a developer and if you know any developers and you want to recommend

• 11:15

them to the studio, we will be at I will be at GDC and perhaps a couple more in the studio

• 11:20

will be at GDC next month as well, which is the Game Developer Conference up in San Francisco.

• 11:24

So just to keep thoughts.

• 11:27

And I'll be at PAX East and Gen Con this year.

• 11:29

So definitely come say hi if you're you're looking to chat with us.

• 11:34

Yeah.

• 11:35

Yeah.

• 11:36

And with that, I think we are ready to move on to our UI update.

UI Update

• 11:39

I think we'll just toss it over there and we'll see you when we return back.

• 11:43

Yeah.

• 11:44

And I know you mentioned this real quick.

• 11:45

This was recorded a couple of days ago.

• 11:49

So you're going to see the discrepancy in the time of day.

• 11:51

It's nighttime.

• 11:52

But yeah, we had a lot of fun.

• 11:55

All right.

• 11:56

We'll see you in a moment.

• 11:57

And welcome a new face to our lovely development update.

• 12:07

We have Colby.

• 12:08

How are you doing?

• 12:09

Hello.

• 12:10

Welcome, Colby.

• 12:11

I'm doing really well.

• 12:12

Yeah.

• 12:13

Excited to be on the live stream.

• 12:15

I know this is the first time this is the first time we've ever actually had an in-depth

• 12:19

focus on UI in the game.

• 12:21

And I think it's going to be pretty interesting topic.

• 12:23

A lot of people are going to get some insight.

• 12:25

Colby, tell us a little bit about yourself.

• 12:27

Yeah.

• 12:28

Well, let's see.

• 12:29

Where to start?

• 12:30

I guess I've been a gamer for my entire life, as long as I've known.

• 12:35

What was the first game that you remember playing?

• 12:38

It came out of the room with Atari.

• 12:44

Let's see.

• 12:45

NES playing some Mario.

• 12:46

Yeah.

• 12:47

Nice.

• 12:48

Dying a lot.

• 12:49

But yeah.

• 12:51

So been a gamer my whole life.

• 12:54

Got into gaming after going to school for 3D art and being a concept artist.

• 12:59

And then eventually found my way into UI.

• 13:01

And I've been doing that for seven, eight years now.

• 13:04

So yeah.

• 13:05

Nice.

• 13:06

Awesome.

• 13:07

When it comes to UI, what's your favorite part about it?

• 13:10

What inspires you?

• 13:12

Yeah.

• 13:13

It's a mixture of things.

• 13:15

I love being able to use all my artistic skills that I've built up over the years.

• 13:19

But then it's a cool logical puzzle.

• 13:21

Where looking into how people react psychologically to different information.

• 13:27

Yeah.

• 13:28

Like a behavior element of design.

• 13:30

That always intrigues me too.

• 13:31

There's a lot of that when it comes to communications as well, which is a lot of behavioral stuff.

• 13:39

Whenever you're creating UI, it's not just you.

• 13:41

You've got some homies as well.

• 13:43

Do you want to talk a little bit about your team?

• 13:45

I know that was something you really wanted to do.

• 13:47

Be careful.

• 13:48

Once you start naming names like Steven does, you got to name everyone.

• 13:50

You got to get all of them.

• 13:53

Yeah.

• 13:54

No, we've been super fortunate here.

• 13:56

I came in and joined the team about a year ago and was joined the team with Grat and

• 14:00

Tim who are two of our UI engineers.

• 14:05

And then we grew the team pretty quickly on the UI art and design side.

• 14:08

So we've got Jeff, we've got Natalie, and we have Drew who are all helping make this

• 14:14

all happen.

• 14:15

So everything you'll see is going to be.

• 14:17

Yeah.

• 14:18

You guys have built actually a great team.

• 14:20

And for the longest time, many of you guys out in the audience will know as watching

• 14:26

the project over time that there hasn't been much love given to the UI front over the years.

• 14:32

But you probably now have seen, especially with our last stream, a little bit of the

• 14:36

peak under the hood for what's been going on with the UI team.

• 14:40

And they have been doing an absolutely stellar job.

• 14:43

I think we found the magic in this team.

• 14:47

So very excited for what you're going to show today, Colby, and the progress that everyone

• 14:51

on your team has made for the game.

• 14:53

I mean, it looks great.

• 14:54

Yeah, we always start with a lot of programmer UI and then it comes into the beautification

• 14:59

happens and we're now there.

• 15:01

Yeah, because before you get to the point where you are really understanding and cognizant

• 15:07

of the nitty gritty details that a particular system might have, some of that UI work can

• 15:11

be wasted when it gets reauthored or it gets refactored.

• 15:15

And now we're at a place where a lot of these GDDs and these systems are stood up and ready

• 15:22

to kind of have complimentary UI associated with it.

• 15:25

And that's what we, I think, are really excited about seeing that come to life, seeing the

• 15:30

style of it, seeing everything you guys are doing.

• 15:32

It looks great.

• 15:33

Yeah.

• 15:34

Yeah.

• 15:35

That's a great transition into the style element of it before we even get too crazy into showing

• 15:41

you the end goal.

• 15:44

There's a lot of elements that are the steps prior to that.

• 15:47

So I don't know if you want to first kind of walk us through what goes into creating

• 15:50

like a style guide for UI.

• 15:53

And if you want me to bring up anything on the screen, just let me know as well.

• 15:57

Yeah.

• 15:58

I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into building UI.

• 16:01

It's not just coming up with a bunch of things and throwing it onto screens.

• 16:08

We put a lot of thought into this and we wanted to take our time to build a real good style

• 16:11

guide so we can make sure our windows are consistent.

• 16:16

And yeah, we can start showing some of the stuff.

• 16:18

We can show you guys the process we went through.

• 16:23

So we'll first bring up...

• 16:24

Now you guys are going to be seeing, and Colby, if you want to talk just a little bit about...

• 16:28

Because a lot of people probably aren't accustomed to that modular approach and how you kind

• 16:32

of define these borders and whatnot.

• 16:34

Give them a little bit of context to what they're about to see.

• 16:36

They're going to see some of these elements and be like, what is this?

• 16:39

Yeah.

• 16:40

So we'll show you a lot of little pieces that are going to be part of a bigger picture eventually.

• 16:45

So we really start with like shape language and all these little components.

• 16:50

And we start designing out what are the motifs, these simple graphic elements that'll help

• 16:59

sell what is the Ashes of Creation UI?

• 17:02

What is it all going to look like?

• 17:04

And so we start with a lot of explorations.

• 17:06

This is just a small chunk of what we've worked through.

• 17:10

And we're using those to start building up and building up and make a cohesive style

• 17:15

that you'll see.

• 17:16

So these will be like the corners of your window frames.

• 17:19

And these will be what determines what the line breaks look like.

• 17:22

And I know it's all very subtle and a lot of people may not notice it all the time in

• 17:26

games, but we wanted to get a really nice subtle, but still fantasy style going through

• 17:32

here.

• 17:33

Right.

• 17:34

And there's a lot of different directions that UI can take.

• 17:37

Many of us who have played a lot of games can see the spectrum from really bulky, invasive,

• 17:43

heavy kind of elements that you're accustomed to from the late 90s to the early 2000s and

• 17:48

where the direction's gone for UI a little bit with more modern games and more minimalistic

• 17:53

approach.

• 17:54

Talk to us a little bit about kind of the differences in those philosophies.

• 17:57

Yeah, totally.

• 17:59

And it's definitely a flavor approach, right?

• 18:02

So people choose between one of those things.

• 18:05

And so one of the first things we always do is we gather tons of reference.

• 18:09

And so we're all sitting down in a room and we're saying, oh, what do we see as the ashes

• 18:13

of creation UI?

• 18:14

And we start picking from these different more complex and artistic or more subtle and

• 18:20

minimalistic or a balance of the mix.

• 18:23

Right.

• 18:24

And I remember some of the first conversations that you and I had with the broader team is

• 18:30

with those reference boards, kind of dialing in what that visual, you know, looks like

• 18:37

for Ashes of Creation.

• 18:39

And we saw modern takes on it.

• 18:41

We saw older takes on a traditional takes on it, bulkier takes on it and even the filigree

• 18:46

down to the very minute details of these borders and these and these corners like there's just

• 18:52

so many examples that live there.

• 18:54

You guys did a great job kind of condensing that feedback down into a very cohesive approach

• 18:59

for the style.

• 19:01

Talk to us about a little bit about like, you know, how you utilize these corners and

• 19:04

edges to kind of populate in a more modular fashion, the broader design of the UI.

• 19:10

Yeah.

• 19:11

So a big portion of what we do is kind of creating this like toolkit, basically.

• 19:17

So rather than having every time you go to a screen, we have something new.

• 19:21

It's here are all of these different things that we'll use to build a set of windows that

• 19:27

are all going to look like they're built the same way.

• 19:29

They're going to have a similar theme throughout.

• 19:31

And we build in engine, we'll build a bunch of these things as like components.

• 19:37

So when we go in like the first screens we built always take the longest because it's

• 19:42

going to be, you know, we're building all the little parts that we put in.

• 19:45

And then once we do a button, it's like, oh, hey, here's the button.

• 19:48

And then we'll keep populating those buttons throughout.

• 19:50

And then like we're trying to build as smart as possible because we have a pretty big game

• 19:54

ahead of us.

• 19:56

And so everything we're doing is built modular so that we can update in one place and it'll

• 20:01

go throughout the whole game.

• 20:03

So if we decide, hey, we want our buttons to be, you know, 10% brighter.

• 20:06

Here you go.

• 20:07

Quick.

• 20:08

Yeah.

• 20:09

Absolutely.

• 20:10

Yeah.

• 20:11

And as you can see.

• 20:12

And I'm showing some of these along the way.

• 20:13

Oh, go ahead.

• 20:14

Sorry.

• 20:15

Oh, yeah.

• 20:16

No, it's okay.

• 20:17

Yeah.

• 20:18

As you can see on screen, I mean, there were a ton of different explorations that we went

• 20:20

through here that, you know, we started with that really rough just shape exploration

• 20:25

and we picked our favorites from it after we kind of had like settled on a more, you

• 20:30

know, smaller, narrow set of styles.

• 20:33

And then we just explored what does that look like on a screen?

• 20:36

What does it look like, you know, with corner elements and line elements and breaks?

• 20:41

And then you can see we start putting them into windows so that we can share and get,

• 20:46

you know, feedback.

• 20:48

And this process takes a while, but it's totally worth it in the end.

• 20:51

So we have a really good foundation to keep moving forward from.

• 20:55

I think the next group you had here was the inventory process.

• 21:01

And this is kind of showing the process, like the walkthrough of like when you first start

• 21:04

designing stuff into what it looks like once it's in game, correct?

• 21:08

And so we'll start with the gray box if you want to talk a little bit about how that works.

• 21:13

Yeah.

• 21:14

So this is giving people a little bit of insight on how we approach different screens.

• 21:18

So the whole UI process usually starts with something like this, which is called UX.

• 21:23

So user experience focused design.

• 21:26

And so what we're doing is we're, you know, these are just a couple of small mocks based

• 21:30

like the document for the inventory is actually probably like four or five pages long.

• 21:35

And it goes over all the little details of how you interact with things.

• 21:39

And so actually that's a good part of the...

• 21:40

As a user, I would like to be able to click an icon and drag it from one box to another.

• 21:44

Like it's a lot of those little things that designers are designing.

• 21:48

And that's actually a good point to bring up as part of that initial ideation or that

• 21:54

pipeline flow.

• 21:55

You're reviewing these GDDs and understanding kind of what are the system requirements that

• 21:59

you from a UX perspective have to incorporate as part of these wireframes or as part of

• 22:03

these mocks.

• 22:04

Yeah.

• 22:05

So we work with designers constantly here.

• 22:08

We're talking with them about how to make their designs more user friendly and how to

• 22:12

accommodate what we want to make and make it the best version of it.

• 22:17

So we work back and forth.

• 22:19

We'll create these gray boxes, which can go over, like Margaret said, literally, like

• 22:24

how does it look like when you're dragging an item?

• 22:27

And it goes over all these little interactions because we will build these things and then

• 22:32

we'll pass them off to engineers who will hook it all up and make all the functions

• 22:35

work.

• 22:36

And those guys are trying to get every little detail working just right.

• 22:40

So it plays really great.

• 22:42

And the next step after the gray box is approved, we go to an art mock.

• 22:46

And so we take that style.

• 22:47

And if there's anything new, we start applying those things and showing what filters look

• 22:51

like and other things in that nature.

• 22:56

And when you're talking about filters, can you go a little into more detail regarding

• 23:00

what that is?

• 23:01

Oh, yeah.

• 23:02

So this one specifically is just like the filters on the backpack.

• 23:05

So if we want to be able to search for just equipment, we can click equipment and we're

• 23:10

going to show, hey, when we do that, we're going to fade out the icon so that you can

• 23:14

see just the equipment.

• 23:15

But we don't want to reorganize your whole inventory because we know how players are

• 23:18

about their inventory storage.

• 23:21

I'm very organized.

• 23:22

I like my stuff.

• 23:23

I'm kind of seedy about it.

• 23:25

Me too.

• 23:26

I'm as organized as the button that auto sorts my inventory.

• 23:30

Colby and I have like a love for organization.

• 23:35

I know whenever we're writing documents.

• 23:38

Yeah.

• 23:40

And then this.

• 23:41

Oh, no, it's okay.

• 23:43

Yeah, and this gets put straight into the game.

• 23:46

So kind of like what you've seen with our concepts, the 3D, we're kind of a little bit

• 23:50

more of a kind of siloed, not siloed, but we have a little small team that builds the

• 23:57

stuff all together and we work with the designers, we work with the engineers.

• 24:01

Your service oriented team, really.

• 24:03

These requests can come in from engineering, from design, from art or whatever.

• 24:08

And your guys' job is to kind of like understand where the request needs to service and do

• 24:12

deliver kind of that, those elements to those teams.

• 24:16

Yeah.

• 24:17

And we're the support team.

• 24:18

We come in and we help make the design come to life and be playable and interactable.

• 24:23

And then we get a lot of feedback and we build these things to be easy to change and work.

• 24:29

That's why we work so modular is because if something we play it and we're like, oh, that's

• 24:33

not quite right.

• 24:34

We can go and tune that and move it back and get it working just right.

• 24:38

And so that's showing here the concept coming right into the game and we have a whole toolkit

• 24:43

that lets us build these windows a lot faster now that we've assembled that.

• 24:48

Yeah.

• 24:49

And a lot of players, oh, no, no, no, I'm so sorry.

• 24:51

Go ahead.

• 24:52

I was going to say, and obviously we're just showing the inventory, but we do this with

• 24:55

like every piece of UI that we're going forward with and there's a lot of back and forth.

• 25:00

And obviously when we're creating these things, we're also keeping in mind a lot of the customization

• 25:05

that you guys want as well.

• 25:07

So there may be options in the future where you can change different colors.

• 25:12

And so those automatically adjust to everything for those specific elements and things of

• 25:17

that sort.

• 25:18

Especially for colorblind folks, we know that that's something that we want to support.

• 25:21

Yeah.

• 25:22

And I was just going to talk a little, that was what I was going to comment on was Colby,

• 25:27

share with our audience, I think kind of your philosophy when it comes to customizing and

• 25:33

options.

• 25:36

As a player, obviously, I know you have your own desires when you play these games.

• 25:39

Tell us how we're going to be doing things differently in Ashes.

• 25:42

Yeah.

• 25:43

We're going to have a basically everything in the game will be customizable as much as

• 25:48

we can support.

• 25:49

So all of our windows will be scalable.

• 25:52

All of our UI, we have a bunch of scaling options already exposed at this point in the

• 25:58

game.

• 26:00

And moving forward, we've already been working on a HUD editor.

• 26:04

You'll be able to uniquely scale all of your different HUD elements and potentially choose

• 26:10

for different styles of those elements.

• 26:14

It's going to be as much customization as we can fit in there, which we know how much.

• 26:20

It'll be very handy for streamers too, because a lot of streamers have specific UI colors

• 26:23

or they want their camera to be in a certain spot.

• 26:25

So you build, move stuff around the way that you kind of like it to be.

• 26:29

I feel like every MMO player plays differently.

• 26:32

I like my stuff kind of like in a specific space.

• 26:36

And I know that other people do not.

• 26:37

And some people who just have it all there, I'm like, it's so much stuff.

• 26:40

And it's not even that each player plays differently.

• 26:44

It's almost even role dependent.

• 26:47

Like when I'm playing a cleric, the positioning of my name plate for my targeting plate is

• 26:54

very different than if I'm playing a DPS, right?

• 26:57

Like I want that front and center.

• 26:59

I want to see the party list in the middle of my screen and have the target living in

• 27:04

the center as well.

• 27:06

But I don't necessarily want that when I'm playing a different role.

• 27:08

And so I think having that, as you mentioned, the customization options to kind of resize,

• 27:13

but not just resize, place in different locations and associate different connections and having

• 27:19

them hook into the side.

• 27:21

There's just a lot of ideas that we've discussed a lot with the UI team as a whole of like,

• 27:28

where's been our greatest pain point as players and how can we address those and the designs

• 27:32

that we're going to be emphasizing with our UI?

• 27:35

Yeah.

• 27:36

I see that kind of conversation happening more than just with UI.

• 27:40

I see that happening with when we're talking about web, when we're talking about design.

• 27:45

Colby's favorite thing is to see a designer in their GDD try to mock up the USA.

• 27:54

I live for those.

• 27:55

I'm always ashamed when I'm making graphic stuff because Colby and Mike are just amazing.

• 27:59

I'm like, oh, look at this stuff.

• 28:02

We have a full team of people.

• 28:04

They're great at that.

• 28:05

They do amazing work.

• 28:07

But obviously the desire there for a designer incorporating that as part of their GDD is

• 28:11

they're trying to communicate to Colby and the team, what are they trying to get out

• 28:15

of a particular system with UI?

• 28:18

And that's always a great informational piece, but you get a kick out of it sometimes.

• 28:22

Yeah.

• 28:23

And that's one of the strengths of our team too is people just know games.

• 28:27

We have a bunch of, we're not just developers, we're all gamers.

• 28:30

So everybody comes together and they're like, oh, well in this game it worked like this.

• 28:34

And that can give us a great lead on, oh, you want the design to kind of fit this world.

• 28:39

Okay, cool.

• 28:40

And I know that people are going to ask this specifically because of what you brought up,

• 28:46

Steven, in regards to different roles.

• 28:48

You want different types of UI layouts.

• 28:50

Will people be able to save a layout and be able to load it up based on what role they're

• 28:56

playing?

• 28:57

Oh, we've discussed that in the past.

• 28:58

That's absolutely a desire.

• 28:59

Is that as you, oh sorry, go ahead Colby.

• 29:02

You come.

• 29:03

Oh, it's okay.

• 29:04

No, yeah.

• 29:05

Sorry.

• 29:06

One of the first things we did when we were starting to kind of block in the very base

• 29:09

features of our HUD editor was talk about saving and loading profiles.

• 29:14

We're going to have options for like, hey, when I'm in a raid, automatically change my

• 29:19

UI to this.

• 29:20

Raid UI, yes.

• 29:21

Yeah, when I'm in a party, I can change my UI to a specific thing.

• 29:24

So it really will lend itself to customizing your experience.

• 29:27

And we want to have really our kind of a mantra is really solid defaults.

• 29:32

So most people won't need to touch anything, but then the customization for everybody who

• 29:36

wants to.

• 29:37

Yeah.

• 29:38

And that's always, you know, it's funny when we kind of have points of maybe contention

• 29:43

or subjective kind of differences that we as players talk about.

• 29:48

And time it lives in the I know absolutely there, but it lives in the realm between well,

• 29:53

what's default and then how are we giving the players the option to change that?

• 29:57

Right.

• 29:58

And that I think is is really the key in providing those things.

• 30:01

And as Colby said, like, you know, our objective, of course, on the default side is to make

• 30:05

it most applicable to a broad audience, but give the flexibility that you can do whatever

• 30:10

you want based on the many years you've been playing games and, you know, develop your

• 30:14

own idiosyncrasies or habits that you prefer.

• 30:16

Yeah.

• 30:17

I'm a weird player who plays with like I know a lot of people do was I'm like RDFG because

• 30:22

I like having more keys around my like hand to be able to hit buttons versus like not.

• 30:28

So I know and I know some people are like, that's so weird.

• 30:30

I don't know how you could do that.

• 30:31

But it's just like when you train yourself for, you know, 20 years, you get used to it.

• 30:37

But it's not forever.

• 30:38

I'm super weird as well.

• 30:39

I use I really only on my left hand use the hotkeys between Tilda and five.

• 30:46

And then I use a function to do the later hotkeys in the in the hotbar.

• 30:51

I do like control one control.

• 30:53

Yes, exactly.

• 30:54

I want everything to be easy to accept access.

• 30:56

I don't want to stretch my hand across the keyboard.

• 31:00

There's no button past six.

• 31:05

But and then there's some people who just like clicking stuff, which I know like some

• 31:07

people do that.

• 31:08

But it is very interesting to see how different people play.

• 31:12

And there's a right way and a wrong way.

• 31:13

I'm just kidding.

• 31:16

But we do have some more stuff to go through.

• 31:17

So I want to kind of get through that.

• 31:18

And it's you had a lot of iconography stuff.

• 31:21

So I don't know if you want to preempt this before we head into talking a little bit about

• 31:24

that.

• 31:25

Yeah, I mean, we can just look through these slides.

• 31:28

We've done a ton of iconography work and kind of similar to the similarly to what we're

• 31:33

going to be doing for like a style guide for the UI.

• 31:36

We're going to be building out style guides, small ones for each of the types of icons.

• 31:41

So these are showing like, you know, some ideation on the class iconography or the icons

• 31:48

that go at the edge of the different window treatments.

• 31:51

But yeah.

• 31:52

Oh, yes.

• 31:53

Sorry.

• 31:54

Archetypes.

• 31:55

Yes.

• 31:56

There are classes, too.

• 31:57

Yes.

• 31:58

But yeah, but also that's a good point, actually, bringing up the differences between the the

• 32:02

archetype and the class and how perhaps an icon can be promoted from its archetype state

• 32:09

up to the class state and still salvage that iconography from the base archetype.

• 32:13

True.

• 32:14

So you kind of know what your base, your primary archetype is based on like your class icon.

• 32:19

Yeah.

• 32:20

We're trying to get that whole idea locked down.

• 32:22

So when you can see someone, you can tell what they are and what I'm dealing with here.

• 32:27

So yeah, that's the primary purpose, right?

• 32:29

Of these types of UI elements is communicating that information.

• 32:33

I mean, UI's whole purpose is communicating the information to the player.

• 32:38

But at a glance with these particular icons, right?

• 32:40

And that's the whole, you know, I'm getting an understanding and I'm familiar with that

• 32:44

sword because it's the tank or something.

• 32:47

Yeah.

• 32:48

Yeah.

• 32:49

I mean, it's it's a fine line for UI of like making something very, very like aesthetically

• 32:53

pleasing but also making sure, you know, satisfies that like base information it needs to tell

• 32:58

me.

• 32:59

So here you can see some of our ideation between the ability effects and how we go from, you

• 33:04

know, quick, you know, sketches and moving them forward into ability icons.

• 33:10

And we're going to have different like styles for different size of things, too.

• 33:13

So you know, ability icons are all going to fall into one style.

• 33:16

And then like if we do a class emblem, it'll be more detailed.

• 33:19

If we do something really tiny, it's got to be really simple, as you can see with like

• 33:23

these ones on the right here.

• 33:24

They're just going to be.

• 33:25

Some of them are map oriented, so they have to be able to you to be able to see them and

• 33:29

understand what they are when they're like one by one pixel.

• 33:33

Yeah.

• 33:34

And the graphic ones are the hardest ones to do because they're just you have to tell

• 33:37

me what that is right there.

• 33:39

Yeah.

• 33:40

Mm hmm.

• 33:41

Yeah.

• 33:42

So we've done a lot of great work on these.

• 33:45

Natalie and Jeff have done a ton of awesome explorations on these.

• 33:48

Natalie has been doing all the painting for the class abilities you guys have seen in

• 33:53

the last live streams, and they've just been fantastic.

• 33:56

Very, very cool.

• 33:59

I love the the vivid nature of these icons, especially for the ability icons.

• 34:06

The strong contrast that exists within the icon itself that lends to that easy communication

• 34:12

of the ability recognition is super important.

• 34:16

Yeah, we're hoping to have a really awesome set of icons for you guys.

• 34:21

Yeah.

• 34:22

All right.

• 34:23

Yeah.

• 34:24

And with that, I think we're going to move into some like actual mocks that are in game,

• 34:29

but yeah, I not quite in game.

• 34:32

Well, some of them may be in game, but yes, these are just going to be the art mocks for

• 34:38

what we've built so far.

• 34:39

There's some extra ones that are in the works and things that are partial, but these ones

• 34:43

are yeah, nice.

• 34:44

Take a look at these.

• 34:45

We're going to be talking a little bit about kind of feedback.

• 34:49

These are going to be inspected like crazy.

• 34:52

I know they're going to zoom in on every little thing.

• 34:55

So now I would like to preface, though.

• 34:58

For those of you who are going to zoom in on every little detail that as always, this

• 35:04

is a work in progress and things are subject to change.

• 35:09

Some things are even placeholder in these.

• 35:13

So take it with a grain of salt.

• 35:15

Yeah, not everything is built 100% accurate.

• 35:19

So every single system, these are just mocks to get everything, especially as people play

• 35:24

more of the game.

• 35:26

People will be adjusting things and changing things and seeing what works and what doesn't.

• 35:30

So when Alpha 2 comes around, that's when the feedback is going to be very, very important.

• 35:37

So this is kind of a, we wanted to include this, which is showing like all of the different

• 35:41

buttons and accordions and filter buttons and drop downs that we use to build all these

• 35:48

different screens.

• 35:49

So combined with the style guide that we had before, we're going to use these and we build

• 35:54

out all of our screens, which you'll see here.

• 35:55

The reason why they're called accordions is because it opens up.

• 35:57

These are things that open up and kind of expand.

• 36:01

So you can see more of your quests or more of whatever it is.

• 36:05

And whenever you interface with this particular UI element, it actually plays the audio cue

• 36:09

of an accordion in the background.

• 36:10

Yeah.

• 36:11

That'd be fun.

• 36:12

I just poked it the whole time.

• 36:13

Don't give Kat a heart attack.

• 36:14

She's like, what are you getting me into?

• 36:17

Also our audio is amazing too.

• 36:20

Not only does UI interact with design and engineering, but they're also working with

• 36:23

audio and visual effects.

• 36:26

There's a lot of coordination that has to happen for all these things.

• 36:29

Oh yeah.

• 36:30

Yep.

• 36:31

Next one here is dialogue.

• 36:32

And I think there's a couple dialogue ones, right?

• 36:35

Yeah.

• 36:36

We show a couple of different steps.

• 36:37

So this will be like when you're talking to an NPC, going through your potential options

• 36:43

of what you can talk about.

• 36:45

You could ask additional questions or you could jump straight into a quest, hook, whatever

• 36:50

it happens to be.

• 36:51

So some of our base treatments here.

• 36:54

And then this is the quest delivery.

• 36:56

So if you're talking to that NPC and they have something for you to start a task, we'll

• 37:02

present this as a, make your choice.

• 37:04

Do you want to start this task right now and give you the details that we have?

• 37:08

And some objectives may be hidden depending on the quest.

• 37:12

All right.

• 37:13

And then move on to, go ahead, Steven.

• 37:17

I was just going to say, you know, it's a lot of, I've seen a lot of interesting iterations

• 37:24

for how quest gets delivered.

• 37:27

You know, from when I interface with an NPC, I move into this kind of alternate camera

• 37:31

mode and I have the NPC kind of talking to me with, I have the bar underneath it.

• 37:36

But I think that, you know, when you're servicing multiple dialogue trees that have many different

• 37:41

options, this approach is really conducive to kind of, you know, keeping those options

• 37:49

front and center to the player, letting them see that and navigating through the dialogue

• 37:54

tree with a very easy to interact with quest window.

• 38:01

And we even did it that other way that you've mentioned in our previous.

• 38:05

Yes.

• 38:06

In Alpha 1.

• 38:07

Yeah.

• 38:08

And one of the iterations for UI as a placeholder was really that long bar at the bottom screen

• 38:13

kind of approach.

• 38:16

I'm really liking this.

• 38:17

It'd be great to get feedback as you guys are kind of watching this.

• 38:20

As always, it's very important for you guys to get feedback and what you're seeing.

• 38:23

It's, I know we'll talk about that at the end, but yeah, I do love these.

• 38:29

These look great.

• 38:30

Yeah.

• 38:31

And the backpack, which people got a little glimpse of some of this when we were showing

• 38:35

our live stream last month.

• 38:38

Yeah everything's coming online, becoming a little bit more usable and functional.

• 38:42

And we're just, our main goal as UI is to get things in game and usable so that we can

• 38:47

really test it because ultimately you can design anything on paper, but really you got

• 38:52

to get your hands on it in order to.

• 38:54

Absolutely.

• 38:55

I like, I think we saw a lot of commentary in regards to segmenting the backpack into

• 39:00

different, you know, like harvestables and things like that.

• 39:04

Yeah.

• 39:05

Gatherables I should say in quest items.

• 39:07

People really liked seeing that.

• 39:09

Oh absolutely.

• 39:11

Especially with the way our game's going to work with the materials being a little bit,

• 39:14

you know, of a different interaction.

• 39:16

So yeah.

• 39:18

And then the quest items is that quality of life because as MMO players, we all know searching

• 39:23

for the, you know, one vial that's not the vials of your potions, but it's the quest

• 39:28

items.

• 39:29

Absolutely.

• 39:30

And it's always great to have in the quest tracker that actually is living on the HUD

• 39:33

with you, that accessibility for the item.

• 39:36

So you don't have to go digging for an activatable per se.

• 39:39

Oh my gosh.

• 39:40

Yeah.

• 39:41

We'll be doing that too.

• 39:42

Supporting.

• 39:43

Like has that support right there for you.

• 39:45

It's nice.

• 39:46

Yeah.

• 39:47

Or something that you can drag on your, to your bar easily.

• 39:48

Things like that.

• 39:49

Yeah, exactly.

• 39:50

And then we've got blacksmithing.

• 39:51

I know that people are going to be very excited to see this.

• 39:56

Oh my God.

• 39:57

This is the first look I think we've shown of the crafting systems.

• 40:03

And this is kind of our fast crafting.

• 40:04

So not necessarily what we will be end goal, right, Steven?

• 40:09

Yeah, absolutely.

• 40:10

Yeah.

• 40:11

Talk, talk to us a little bit, Colby, about kind of designing for the kind of crafting

• 40:16

needs.

• 40:17

Yeah.

• 40:18

We work with designers a lot on these.

• 40:19

So we've been talking with them about everything they want to get done.

• 40:22

So this one is showing kind of the base needs that we were establishing to get this system

• 40:28

in game and usable as soon as possible.

• 40:30

So right now our crafting does work in game and it's all functional and we're building

• 40:36

out the functionality as we go to expand and based on what we test.

• 40:41

And there's a lot of information you have to communicate via this window, right?

• 40:46

How do you kind of blend between the idea of multiple sub pages that are required to

• 40:52

kind of facilitate all the information versus how much you can show on one particular page?

• 40:56

Like talk to us a little bit about that process.

• 40:58

Yeah, and this is where that game of, you know, understanding how to organize the information,

• 41:04

right?

• 41:05

So we're creating kind of what we like to call like a visual language.

• 41:08

So a lot of our panels you'll see they'll have that left side accordion list, which

• 41:14

is like a real, you know, if we have a lot of dense information, we like to use these

• 41:17

accordions because you can, you know, have a shorter list and then expand out the parts

• 41:22

that you're interested in.

• 41:24

And then we kind of do that same thing where it's context.

• 41:26

So you start on the left and you'll move to the right.

• 41:29

So you make a selection and then there's like details on the right.

• 41:32

And we try to create what we call like visual hierarchy to help you know, like, okay, I've

• 41:38

clicked this and now I move over here and I've got, you know, buttons over here that

• 41:42

are, you know, the only other bright objects on the window.

• 41:45

So it pulls me to say like, okay, I can look and see if I can craft this or whatever it

• 41:50

happens to be.

• 41:51

And there's going to be, you know, some pretty robust systems.

• 41:54

So we're really excited to see when we get our hands on it, where we're, you know, where

• 41:58

we can make it better.

• 41:59

Absolutely.

• 42:00

Yeah.

• 42:01

That is a very important component of the testability and the primary purpose of Alpha

• 42:06

2, as we've always stated, is going to be to get player feedback, to get player hands

• 42:09

on you know, giving us direction on how these things play out.

• 42:16

It's such an important part of being a tester.

• 42:18

So definitely it's very valued.

• 42:21

Yeah, definitely.

• 42:22

Folks did see the journal a bit last time.

• 42:25

I saw a lot of commentary regarding that.

• 42:28

Yeah.

• 42:29

A lot of great feedback, positive feedback about the journal, both from color composition

• 42:33

to layout design to, you know, a lot of different things.

• 42:37

Colby talked to us a little bit about kind of how you guys approached this style of introducing

• 42:43

such a broad spectrum of colors.

• 42:45

I feel like.

• 42:47

Yeah.

• 42:48

We actually used the journal as one of our test cases for the style guide, because it's

• 42:53

a very complex screen.

• 42:54

There's a lot of things that are going on where we have different tiers of story arcs

• 42:59

that might be available for players.

• 43:00

And so we wanted to make sure the color denoted different information for them.

• 43:04

We also have iconography to support that as well.

• 43:08

And we kind of have a little bit of a twist on what a traditional quest system would be

• 43:13

like.

• 43:14

So with these story arcs, we wanted to make sure that it was organized in a familiar way,

• 43:19

but also something that supported all of the design's needs.

• 43:23

We really like how it came out.

• 43:24

Yeah.

• 43:25

And we have a little bit more in depth slash complicated story arc system than you might

• 43:30

find in most of your traditional MMORPGs and how those kind of story arcs can be updated

• 43:36

in real time and kind of how players interface with different segments of that story arc.

• 43:42

So this journal has to facilitate all of those designs, which can make it, as you said, one

• 43:49

of the most complicated, probably, windows that we utilize for characters outside of

• 43:54

probably the mayoral interface.

• 43:55

That's just going to spark more questions about like, hmm, what do you mean?

• 44:00

How is this going to go?

• 44:03

But perhaps that's going to be a future thing.

• 44:05

We definitely need to have some more of our narrative folks on sometime and talk a little

• 44:09

bit about that.

• 44:10

I think Carfen might be a great opportunity for that.

• 44:15

That's true.

• 44:16

And if you did watch our extra live stream, you got a little teaser of some lore there.

• 44:20

And then next up, and we're also later in this live stream, we're going to be showcasing

• 44:25

some teasers as well.

• 44:28

Next month's live stream.

• 44:30

And we've got options, which for most of us, it's one of the first things that we experience

• 44:36

in game, we're like, let me adjust all the things to be the way that I like them.

• 44:40

I want the FOV to be where I want.

• 44:42

I want the audio to be where I want.

• 44:44

And this requires even more elements for you guys to interact with and adjust.

• 44:50

I'm sure that this was probably even more complicated to put together.

• 44:54

Yeah.

• 44:55

Well, and this is where that having a really strong visual language and making that information

• 45:00

really accessible and organized in a good way was really just very important to us.

• 45:06

So one of the other screens that we hit first, not exactly the thing everybody's like, oh,

• 45:11

let me see the options, but very important when we do get them out there in your hands.

• 45:17

I think people will be happy because last, an alpha one, we had like one slider and they

• 45:22

were like, we're constantly getting folks asking for more options.

• 45:26

There'll be a few more sliders.

• 45:29

You'd be surprised.

• 45:30

I don't find myself as a player interfacing with the options menu in many games very often.

• 45:35

I do, like you said, kind of at the start of my gaming experience.

• 45:38

But when I'm in the middle of a game and there's some option that I've newly discovered that

• 45:42

as like, oh God, I need to change this and I need to change it fast.

• 45:46

And I opened that options menu and it is just an absolute cluster.

• 45:49

I'm like, oh, this is terrible.

• 45:51

I need to now spend so much time here.

• 45:54

So easy, intuitive navigation is definitely an important aspect of this, of the options

• 45:58

menu for sure.

• 45:59

Yeah, definitely.

• 46:00

We'll be testing that a lot.

• 46:02

Yes.

• 46:03

Yeah.

• 46:04

So if you could only toss us your thoughts on that or what options you like.

• 46:08

Obviously, this doesn't have everything in there, but it's giving you kind of a glimpse

• 46:13

into the future.

• 46:14

And our character screen, which we have shown various different versions of this throughout

• 46:22

the lifespan of Ashes of Creation.

• 46:24

I know, yeah.

• 46:25

It's gone through many, many iterations.

• 46:28

And I know there's been a couple that people haven't liked, a few that people have liked.

• 46:33

I know that there's always a lot that you have to display here.

• 46:37

And so I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, Colby.

• 46:40

Yeah, we were building this out and we wanted to kind of create something that would handle

• 46:45

a couple of different roles with obviously your equipment slots for what we call a paper

• 46:51

doll, which is that display of your character.

• 46:53

Eventually, it won't just be a image of your character.

• 46:55

We hope to have the 3D character and be able to rotate around, look at what you're wearing.

• 47:02

And then we wanted to support a couple of different features here with some base stats,

• 47:06

the equipment, which will show what equipment you have available to quick swap so you don't

• 47:11

have to have your inventory and the screen open.

• 47:14

Detailed stats for those people who want to get into all of the details.

• 47:18

And then, of course, gear sets.

• 47:20

So this is going to be able to swap your sets of gear quickly and being able to save different

• 47:26

loadouts.

• 47:28

We know all the players who have two sets and there's players who have hundreds of sets.

• 47:32

So yeah, I got all my costumes too, you know, of course.

• 47:37

Of course.

• 47:38

Yeah.

• 47:40

So this has been a lot of the stuff that we've worked on over the past year.

• 47:44

We've built out the style guide while supporting all these live streams.

• 47:47

And it's just been awesome to see this team get up and running in such a short time and

• 47:52

get a ton of work in.

• 47:53

Yeah.

• 47:54

And you have definitely been supporting a lot of teams.

• 47:56

I know a lot of the things that we're showcasing each month, you know, you guys have some semblance

• 48:02

of little bits and pieces that you're kind of showcasing in there.

• 48:05

So like Stephen said, this is the first time we're like just focusing on UI, which I think

• 48:10

is kind of exciting.

• 48:12

And probably talk to us a little bit about kind of the types of feedback you like to

• 48:16

see from a demonstration like this of the UI.

• 48:20

Yeah.

• 48:21

I mean, just general, like people's feeling of these things.

• 48:25

The best feedback will of course be when you guys are able to get your hands on it.

• 48:28

But if you guys have real strong opinions on, hey, I want to see these kind of things

• 48:32

in my journal and, you know, we've got a lot of features planned and we have a lot of good,

• 48:41

you know, options available and there's going to be things that you haven't seen, you know,

• 48:44

like maybe your journal ties into an archive that has a little bit more of that lore background

• 48:50

in it and it keeps track of what maybe stories you've participated in.

• 48:55

So we've really, you know, we're building this out.

• 48:57

Oh, sorry.

• 48:58

Sorry.

• 48:59

I'm sorry.

• 49:00

Go ahead.

• 49:01

But yeah, we're just building this out, you know, part by part and we're going to be supporting

• 49:04

the team.

• 49:05

So if you guys see stuff that you really like, you know, make sure to throw a thumbs up out

• 49:10

there, make a post or comments because we do, you know, we do read all of this stuff

• 49:15

and we try to make sure that we're, you know, seeing the feedback people are giving.

• 49:20

Absolutely.

• 49:21

Especially.

• 49:22

Go ahead.

• 49:23

Go ahead.

• 49:24

We'll be putting up a thread.

• 49:25

It'll probably be up right now, right meow, over on our forums, forums.ashisofcreation.com.

• 49:32

Check it out over there.

• 49:33

Definitely leave us some thoughts on our UI.

• 49:35

We'll have a few questions that are good, like starters for you.

• 49:38

But definitely tell us what you'd like to see, some features that you'd like to see,

• 49:42

some features you liked from the displays that we showed today.

• 49:45

And we will be creating a report for the UI team and providing that.

• 49:51

Roshan and Vaknar are always so great about putting those together and they're super in-depth.

• 49:56

They read through everything, which makes it very easy for the design team and development

• 50:00

team to be able to quickly read through those and get a good overview of kind of your guys'

• 50:05

thoughts and feelings and suggestions.

• 50:07

You guys always have some great ideas as well.

• 50:10

And always make sure to incorporate as part of your feedback, you know, the examples and

• 50:16

inspiration for you that you've experienced that did things well from a UI.

• 50:21

What stands out about a game that you think had great UI?

• 50:24

What was it about that game that you felt was great with regards to their UI?

• 50:29

And what were some examples of games that had bad UI and why did you feel that it had

• 50:33

bad UI?

• 50:34

Those are great like cornerstone touch points on how to give good feedback is always using

• 50:39

those references, right?

• 50:40

Because it's there that we can find better detail-oriented kind of inspection.

• 50:46

So yeah.

• 50:47

Definitely.

• 50:48

Yeah.

• 50:49

Give us your feedback.

• 50:50

And with that, I do want to give you a chance, Colby, to kind of do a little plug.

• 50:54

I know you have one, of course.

• 50:56

And then anything else you want to say at the end of here before we head on over to

• 50:59

our character art segment?

• 51:01

Yeah.

• 51:02

So, well, our UI team has grown quickly over the past year, but we are looking for one

• 51:06

more UI artist or UX designer.

• 51:10

We're looking for someone to help join the team and kind of build this out with us.

• 51:14

So if you guys are, you know, if you have some experience, please send us your resume.

• 51:19

Absolutely.

• 51:20

Apply.

• 51:21

Get out there and help us raise awareness.

• 51:23

Yeah.

• 51:25

And the other thing is, you know, I just want to give thanks to our team because our team

• 51:29

is awesome.

• 51:30

We work really hard and we have a really nice diverse set of people who are able to accomplish

• 51:36

all of these different tasks while we're able to, you know, help this game come to life.

• 51:40

So we're just very fortunate.

• 51:43

We got a great team over here.

• 51:44

All right.

• 51:45

Well, definitely head on over Intrepidstudios.com.

• 51:48

If you are interested or if you know somebody forward along that position, we'd love to

• 51:53

fill it with someone who is amazing to join our Intrepid family.

• 51:58

And with that, we're going to say thank you, Colby.

• 52:00

We're going to head on over to our next segment, which is our character art update.

• 52:04

So we will see you momentarily.

• 52:06

Bye, Colby.

• 52:07

Thank you.

• 52:08

Thanks.

• 52:09

See you guys.

• 52:10

Welcome back.

• 52:11

We hope that you all had fun.

• 52:14

That was an in-depth exploration of the UI process.

• 52:17

Very much so.

• 52:19

And it seemed like you all really, really enjoyed that.

• 52:22

We hope that you did.

• 52:23

It seems like y'all did.

• 52:25

And obviously, like Stephen mentioned, there are a lot of it's work in progress.

• 52:29

It's not final, but we will have a lot of customization, a lot of options, as we noted

• 52:34

in there.

• 52:35

And I can't wait to go on the Reddit later and just see all the speculation and hypotheses

• 52:42

and theory crafting about these windows.

• 52:47

And of course, you guys will be able to see some more of them.

• 52:50

We usually share a lot of the pieces throughout the month.

• 52:56

So definitely keep an eye on our social for those things.

• 52:59

But I did want to cover a couple different questions that Vagner and Roshan tossed my

• 53:03

way.

• 53:05

These were kind of side things, which is people are wondering if they'll be able to share

• 53:09

UI layouts.

• 53:10

So let's say I have a UI layout that I really like.

• 53:12

Is that something that we may have options to share?

• 53:15

Or is that something we could explore in the future?

• 53:18

That can be a little bit difficult.

• 53:22

We've talked about it in the past, but there are unique elements that would be exposed

• 53:27

for certain classes and or characters that might not be for others.

• 53:33

And that data might be difficult to have transferable or shareable.

• 53:39

But it's something that we're not shying away from looking into.

• 53:42

So no definitive answer yet on that.

• 53:44

And I know we did say that UI will be customizable.

• 53:47

You will be able to move stuff around, scale things the way you'd like.

• 53:51

In most games, you always are able to add extra action bars or ability bars.

• 53:55

And they're curious if that's going to be something because we didn't say it explicitly.

• 53:58

Yes.

• 53:59

Yes.

• 54:00

Absolutely.

• 54:01

And so, short of customization that we want to provide each player, because some people

• 54:06

like to have a very minimalistic number of hot bars.

• 54:09

They don't need necessarily to have three, four, five hot bars that are available.

• 54:13

But some people do like that.

• 54:14

They want to have all their items listed on their hot bar, as well as their abilities,

• 54:18

as well as their mounts, as well as anything that they can essentially interact with as

• 54:24

an icon.

• 54:25

They want to place it somewhere on a hot bar that's visible.

• 54:28

So the breadth of customization should encompass those desires from the more minimal to the

• 54:33

heavier player type.

• 54:36

And when we're in our betas and we have a lot more of that stuff accessible to you all,

• 54:40

if you have any feedback along the way, we're all ears.

• 54:43

You've seen our journey along the way.

• 54:45

We're constantly taking y'all's feedback.

• 54:47

And maybe we won't be able to implement stuff immediately, but we'll definitely be taking

• 54:51

your feedback and communicating with you all along the way.

• 54:57

And then the last one here was, will there be weight capacity?

• 55:00

There's been a lot of questions in regards to that.

• 55:02

That's not really UI related.

• 55:04

There's not weight capacity.

• 55:07

Weight management, in my opinion, and this is of course subjective, but weight management

• 55:12

is not a compelling mechanic for players to have to deal with in an MMO setting.

• 55:19

It can be for sure in a survival game type mode or in other types of games.

• 55:25

But really we want to focus on spacing and we want to focus on stack size, those kind

• 55:32

of supplement where weight would be relevant.

• 55:35

This is more about how much capacity do I have?

• 55:39

What are the shapes and sizes of the different types of materials and or gatherables that

• 55:42

I might acquire?

• 55:45

And how does that fit into my gatherable bags?

• 55:50

And what are my stack limits?

• 55:51

And how can those stack limits be kind of augmented or changed based on the bag type

• 55:56

or quality that I purchased from a crafter or my expertise within a particular profession

• 56:01

when I'm gathering resources out in the wild?

• 56:04

That's where we want to kind of make those choices be more relevant and compelling.

• 56:10

Right.

• 56:11

And with that, I think we're ready to move on to our character update.

Character Art Update

• 56:15

So we'll be doing that.

• 56:19

Let's show all the things.

• 56:20

There's so many cool things.

• 56:22

And like I said, stay till the end.

• 56:24

We've got a little teaser for you guys at the end.

• 56:27

We have a little video teaser.

• 56:28

You got to stay for that.

• 56:31

So with that, we will first kick things off with we've got you guys did see some Cyclops

• 56:36

weapons before, but now there's even more Cyclops weapons, which these are looking very,

• 56:42

very awesome.

• 56:46

I'm sad actually because I don't have my extra monitor.

• 56:50

So you can't see.

• 56:51

I know.

• 56:52

I can't see.

• 56:53

What are we looking at?

• 56:54

In the run of show, I usually always have all of the images.

• 56:55

I know, but I don't have it.

• 56:59

But these are the Cyclops weapons.

• 57:00

There's mace, bow, wand, all the goodies.

• 57:07

I'm looking on my phone.

• 57:08

I apologize to the audience if I'm looking on the phone.

• 57:11

Yeah.

• 57:12

You know, to give you guys an idea, the Cyclops, which you'll be seeing at some point here

• 57:16

in the very near future is and you guys have seen the model for it already in the past,

• 57:21

right?

• 57:22

Some parts.

• 57:23

Some parts.

• 57:24

It is a very large, like 45 or 50 foot.

• 57:28

I think it's like over.

• 57:29

He's carrying a tree in one of the images.

• 57:31

Yeah, it's like a 50 foot tall, giant raid boss.

• 57:36

And he has a lot of like natural oriented weapons that are available that he uses.

• 57:45

And I think the character team just did a great job with these.

• 57:48

They really kind of, I think, reflected the nature of that particular creature, which

• 57:54

is always cool to have because it ties you into that story.

• 57:57

It ties you when you acquire this thing or cool.

• 57:59

You got to have some cool Cyclops loot.

• 58:04

And also, you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about car from here because

• 58:07

we're to show some cool car from weapons.

• 58:09

But look at these weapons.

• 58:10

They're so sick.

• 58:11

And I heard that y'all got your bingo card.

• 58:14

The community puts together like a little bingo card or things that they think we're

• 58:18

going to talk about in the live stream.

• 58:20

I always love seeing how they get a bingo card.

• 58:23

Yeah.

• 58:24

When you said car, bingo, why segment?

• 58:27

Oh, they're bingo, which is cute.

• 58:30

But yeah, these are looking awesome.

• 58:33

And these are achievable items.

• 58:35

Just very, very.

• 58:38

Yeah, I again, I apologize.

• 58:40

I just want to watch it on my phone because I don't have another screen here.

• 58:43

So I'm not I'm not distracted.

• 58:46

Yeah, he's he's not looking at his phone for other reasons.

• 58:49

He's watching the thing.

• 58:51

And then we've got some NPCs that have been created.

• 58:55

So this first one is an ambitious academic.

• 58:59

There's a couple different versions with the, you know, the petticoat vibes.

• 59:04

Yeah, these are pretty cool.

• 59:09

And I don't know if we want to tease a little bit about the academic aspect of it.

• 59:14

What for Carfin?

• 59:15

But oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 59:16

I mean, I think the you're talking about the story and yeah, yeah.

• 59:22

You know, you guys, those of you who probably tuned in during the live stream for Extra

• 59:26

Life last November, got a little bit of history and story around Carfin.

• 59:31

Carfin is a very large dungeon complex.

• 59:34

It's both an urban area at the base and then a huge mega dungeon with lots of different

• 59:40

levels.

• 59:41

I had a lot of fun in other games as inspiration with like those of you played Lineage 2 with

• 59:47

Tower of Insolence and the Krumah Tower I thought were really cool.

• 59:52

And if the story behind the tower at Carfin is that it is actually a part of the university

• 59:59

complex that was initially brought to the Aelahumans by the elves, the Pyrrhon elves.

• 1:00:10

And they kind of helped establish and taught the humans how to master the essence and how

• 1:00:15

to master magic.

• 1:00:17

And this was one of the great universities of the Aelah Empire.

• 1:00:19

So a lot of the experience and encounters there are going to be arcane in nature.

• 1:00:26

They're going to be representative of that essence magic and it's going to have some

• 1:00:32

powerful foes.

• 1:00:33

And also I was just told, thank you Jeremy for DMing me, that this is a dropped set.

• 1:00:38

So this is not a NPC outfit.

• 1:00:41

This is like a thing that you will achieve in game.

• 1:00:45

So apologies.

• 1:00:46

Sometimes I don't have all the context.

• 1:00:50

But yeah, this is the River Stalker, which I already saw y'all.

• 1:00:54

I'm showing it while Stephen was talking, but it's very, very cool.

• 1:00:59

And then I don't know if you want to say who this is.

• 1:01:02

I love that fur.

• 1:01:03

Yeah, I know the fur looks so good.

• 1:01:05

The fur looks so good.

• 1:01:06

Do the boots have, is it boots with the fur?

• 1:01:08

It is.

• 1:01:09

There are some boots with the fur.

• 1:01:12

We have a lot of boots with the fur.

• 1:01:14

I think people like boots with the fur.

• 1:01:19

This next one is, do we want to say who she is?

• 1:01:22

I have her name, but I didn't know if you wanted to share that yet.

• 1:01:25

Oh, that's a question.

• 1:01:28

There have been people who have been wondering who this lady is, but we haven't shared.

• 1:01:31

I think we saved that.

• 1:01:32

I don't know.

• 1:01:33

We saved the name?

• 1:01:34

Okay.

• 1:01:35

I think next month when we do the Tower of Carthend kind of walkthrough, we can expand

• 1:01:40

on that a bit.

• 1:01:41

Okay.

• 1:01:42

Are you talking, I don't know if I'm looking at the right thing.

• 1:01:43

I'm looking at a statue right now.

• 1:01:45

This is a different, this is not the person.

• 1:01:47

The other person we have talked about during the actual episode.

• 1:01:49

Right.

• 1:01:50

No, I'm not talking about the raid boss.

• 1:01:51

I'm talking about the influence of the previous deans of the college.

• 1:01:56

Yes.

• 1:01:57

Okay, cool.

• 1:01:58

I will not say her name then.

• 1:02:02

And then we've got Laria Lamon, which we have talked about before.

• 1:02:07

Yes, she was the primary protagonist become antagonist in the story from last November's

• 1:02:17

livestream with Extra Life, and now you can see her character model.

• 1:02:22

And she is a very powerful wizard who unfortunately in her desire to save as many as possible

• 1:02:33

went down a path that was unfortunately recoverable for her.

• 1:02:37

And I think we'll talk a little more about that also next month.

• 1:02:41

I feel like this is what you would hear from her, just like a little moaning.

• 1:02:49

Just a morning, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:02:53

And then we've got some concept art that we will show.

• 1:03:00

And the first one here-

• 1:03:01

Someone said, Pizza Drew said, I can fix her.

• 1:03:04

I just imagine players saying that as they're rushing to the top of the tower.

• 1:03:09

And then we've got the Aelin City.

• 1:03:12

You can see a little bit here.

• 1:03:14

Oh, yeah, you get to see a little bit of the grandiose nature of the starting city in the

• 1:03:23

Aelin Empire.

• 1:03:24

So this was the former capital of the Aelin Empire.

• 1:03:29

And this is where players are returning to if you choose that particular Divine Gateway.

• 1:03:35

It's huge.

• 1:03:36

The QA team is kind of running through it because we were trying to see the space and

• 1:03:42

it's just massive.

• 1:03:43

It is a massive area.

• 1:03:45

And again, the reason why it's so large and why this might be very atypical for us as

• 1:03:51

players to experience in such a starting area something so big is because this place changes

• 1:04:00

based on what you do in the world and different areas of this city become accessible as the

• 1:04:07

world develops further.

• 1:04:09

And there's reasons for you to come back at later levels and kind of experience that because

• 1:04:13

again, part of what makes I think the system design around these nodes and world building

• 1:04:20

so compelling from an MMORPG specific perspective is that many MMOs we play, we go through progression

• 1:04:27

and we leave areas and we never go back to those areas.

• 1:04:30

They become essentially content that gets lost.

• 1:04:36

And that's such a sad concept to have because a lot of time goes into making those areas

• 1:04:41

compelling and beautiful and something that's iconic in your experience within the game.

• 1:04:48

But the way that our world progresses and that our points of interest progress as well,

• 1:04:54

those areas are constantly being updated.

• 1:04:56

They're constantly changing and you're maintaining that traditional experience of character progression

• 1:05:02

and leveling for new players that are coming and joining later.

• 1:05:05

But now they're immersed in the social environment as well because the player population hasn't

• 1:05:10

moved past that area like we see in many other MMORPGs.

• 1:05:14

You have an opportunity to actually graduate into that social environment because this

• 1:05:19

area has opportunity for late game players to come back and explore and experience things.

• 1:05:25

The persistence in our world is a little bit different.

• 1:05:28

So what my experience as a new player is might be different from someone else's, especially

• 1:05:33

if we both start playing it at a different time frame, which is really cool.

• 1:05:38

And this is concept because I know some people were asking, this is concept, but we've already

• 1:05:43

seen the- Oh, our concepts to implementation are very

• 1:05:48

one to one.

• 1:05:49

If you've seen some of our other concepts and then our in game, they're pretty great

• 1:05:52

because our artists are just phenomenal.

• 1:05:54

But I've already seen some of this being gray boxed in the world.

• 1:05:58

Like I said, we were running around it.

• 1:05:59

It's massive.

• 1:06:00

And then there's also the starting, the Aelan portal area, which we've already started seeing

• 1:06:07

in game as well, the model of it.

• 1:06:09

And you can see the little people for the scale, how big this thing is.

• 1:06:13

It's huge.

• 1:06:14

And that is- Bad Earp here said, the Stargate.

• 1:06:22

It's a defined gateway.

• 1:06:23

There's a difference.

• 1:06:24

I love Stargate though.

• 1:06:25

I know.

• 1:06:26

I like Stargate too.

• 1:06:27

There's an RPG for Stargate, which I've gotten to play.

• 1:06:29

It's really fun.

• 1:06:30

Oh, that's cool.

• 1:06:32

But yes, no Stargate.

• 1:06:38

With that, we're going to head into our Q&A segment.

• 1:06:41

I'll have some images up in the background while we do Q&A.

• 1:06:46

Jaffa Creek.

• 1:06:48

I'm sorry.

• 1:06:50

Love it.

• 1:06:51

So good.

• 1:06:52

With that, we have our first question from Rufian.

• 1:06:54

They want to know about ranged weapons, which is, what will be the differences between a

• 1:07:00

crossbow and a regular bow?

• 1:07:02

And I think we've talked about short bow versus a long bow.

• 1:07:05

We don't have crossbows.

• 1:07:07

However, bows of different types will vary across many different stats between the damage

• 1:07:15

that's done, the damage window that's possible, the attack speed, stats that are associated

• 1:07:22

with those particular types of weapons.

• 1:07:25

And not only that, but very important is the weapon skill progression.

• 1:07:30

So each weapon group or weapon type has a associated skill progression where you can

• 1:07:37

unlock the ability to proc certain types of effects.

• 1:07:41

And they also have associated with them different combos that can be utilized.

• 1:07:46

Sorry.

• 1:07:47

And you know what?

• 1:07:48

The chat is right.

• 1:07:49

I got excited to get into the Q&A that I missed the studio update again.

• 1:07:54

Normally I'm like looking at the run of the show, but I just kind of got past it.

• 1:07:59

Yeah.

• 1:08:00

Do you have anything, any updates for us for the studio?

• 1:08:03

I know we talked a little bit about the fun stuff we were doing for February.

• 1:08:07

Yeah.

• 1:08:08

We talked a little bit about that.

• 1:08:10

We are now moving into what we have moved into as of last month and this month.

Studio Update

• 1:08:16

Another round of significant hiring.

• 1:08:19

You can see that on our intrepidstudios.com website.

• 1:08:23

It is of course important and just a side comment.

• 1:08:29

I'm sure many of you, as we are aware of the kind of turbulent times that the tech industry

• 1:08:36

is seeing right now with the layoffs from different studios and companies.

• 1:08:42

And that's always a hard thing to watch because the gaming industry is an industry of

• 1:08:49

passion and it is an industry of creatives who deserve an opportunity to excel in their

• 1:08:57

work and feel confident and secure in their position and the jobs that they have.

• 1:09:02

And it's a sad thing to see when those things kind of happen.

• 1:09:06

But at Intrepid Studios, we endeavor to be different.

• 1:09:10

I think we've done a great and sustainable way to kind of proceed with this game's development.

• 1:09:18

And I want to kind of shout out the fact that we have opportunities at the studio.

• 1:09:23

Yes, we are very selective and the recruitment process can be a bit difficult.

• 1:09:31

But I just want to say to those people out there who are affected, you can send your

• 1:09:37

applications into intrepidstudios.com.

• 1:09:39

Go on there, take a look at the jobs that are available.

• 1:09:42

If you don't see one that pertains to you necessarily, you can still provide your resume

• 1:09:48

and we will consider those.

• 1:09:50

So that hiring process is moving forward.

• 1:09:53

Additionally, we've had some-

• 1:09:55

On that front, I just want to mention that on the careers page, there is an uncategorized

• 1:09:59

section that says, don't see your position, you can still apply and apply through that

• 1:10:04

one right there.

• 1:10:06

Absolutely.

• 1:10:07

And then in addition to that, we've been changing up a little bit some of our production practices

• 1:10:13

over the course since the start of this new year.

• 1:10:16

We are now seeing in the month of February, the fruits of those changes, which are bountiful

• 1:10:22

and we are very happy with I think, some of these production changes that we've seen.

• 1:10:28

Jacob spearheading that charge has been doing a great job in that sense.

• 1:10:32

So studio update is very strong in February.

• 1:10:37

Very strong indeed.

• 1:10:38

Yeah, it's been pretty exciting for me too.

• 1:10:43

And moving back to the Q&A segment, I do want to ask a follow-up question in regards to

Outro and Q&A

• 1:10:50

you, because you stated there aren't crossbows, but we have sold crossbow looking items.

• 1:10:55

Are those considered short bows?

• 1:10:57

Yes, those would be considered skins.

• 1:11:08

That's a good question.

• 1:11:09

Let me check into that actually, because I don't know specifically what you're in reference

• 1:11:12

to and I would want to make sure I'm giving an accurate answer.

• 1:11:16

So I will look into what that was.

• 1:11:19

It's likely that that would be a skin that's applied to a different weapon category.

• 1:11:23

That's not a crossbow category.

• 1:11:24

Okay.

• 1:11:25

I will make a note that Stephen will...

• 1:11:29

Yes, and then we'll post that answer on the forums or Cody will.

• 1:11:33

Yeah, that sounds great.

• 1:11:34

We can post that as a response in the live stream thread.

• 1:11:39

Is that a thing on the bingo card that Stephen got stumped on a question?

• 1:11:42

No, but I think derailing is on there.

• 1:11:45

Oh, okay.

• 1:11:46

Perfect.

• 1:11:47

Perfect.

• 1:11:48

Which you've done.

• 1:11:49

Did I ever tell you about the time that I fired a crossbow?

• 1:11:51

Like real IRL?

• 1:11:52

Yeah.

• 1:11:53

Yeah.

• 1:11:54

I've actually pulled.

• 1:11:55

They're actually very difficult to pull that straight back.

• 1:11:57

Bows in general are hard to pull back if you've ever-

• 1:11:59

Oh, one time I was like my initial thing in archery, I think I pulled it back and I shot

• 1:12:04

the arrow up and it went over the shooting range and I could have sworn I heard somebody

• 1:12:10

scream, but-

• 1:12:11

Stephen!

• 1:12:12

Yeah, that was a...

• 1:12:13

I'm just kidding.

• 1:12:15

I was trying to derail so whoever had that bingo card could get it.

• 1:12:19

Oh, okay.

• 1:12:20

I got you.

• 1:12:21

I was just like...

• 1:12:22

Oh my God, it's scaring me.

• 1:12:26

Digital Daydream wants to know about player corruption.

• 1:12:28

Are corrupted players able to enter a freehold's boundaries or access its content?

• 1:12:34

And if so, what's stopping freeholds from being corrupted players' safe havens?

• 1:12:38

I actually kind of love this idea where you're on the run and you're like, can I stay in

• 1:12:43

your house?

• 1:12:46

So corrupted players can access their freeholds.

• 1:12:49

Can they access other people's freeholds?

• 1:12:52

Well freeholds are in the open world so you can move into those freeholds.

• 1:12:55

The protection area is in the house, but what corrupted players can't do is they cannot

• 1:13:01

interface with storage nor can they interface with player trading either while corrupt.

• 1:13:08

So if they had storage items that were on their freehold, they wouldn't have the opportunity

• 1:13:13

to deposit or withdraw.

• 1:13:15

All right.

• 1:13:16

Hopefully that answers the question there.

• 1:13:18

And then we have Epelove who wants to know about class specific actions.

• 1:13:23

What kind and how many special or unique activities can we expect classes to perform outside of

• 1:13:30

combat such as rogues opening locks, tracking enemies as a ranger, or removing corruption

• 1:13:37

from the ground as a cleric?

• 1:13:39

Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:13:41

So that's funny that this question exists because just 30 minutes ago I was talking

• 1:13:47

about those utility abilities like finding tracks or cleansing poisons, arcane eye to

• 1:13:53

reveal secret passages.

• 1:13:56

The idea is how do we blend the traditional tabletop RPG role of utility and or skill

• 1:14:03

checks into the setting of a graphical MMORPG?

• 1:14:10

And I think that it's both a compliment of the skill kit that's available and how it

• 1:14:17

interacts with the world for those curated or special designs within these locations.

• 1:14:23

So to answer that question, that is intended.

• 1:14:27

We've shown a little bit of that in the past and it is something that we want to make feel

• 1:14:31

compelling and rewarding and viable as a use case scenario in many different settings that

• 1:14:37

you might find yourself in within the world.

• 1:14:40

And not a question that's on here, but I will add it as a bonus one because the range weapon

• 1:14:45

one didn't get answered.

• 1:14:47

But we are moving to 5.1.

• 1:14:49

I know a lot of people were asking about that.

• 1:14:51

We're constantly keeping an eye on the latest.

• 1:14:56

Actually that's been a big endeavor over the course of the last, I would say about six

• 1:15:00

weeks.

• 1:15:02

And just to give you guys a bit of context if you're unfamiliar with the game development

• 1:15:08

process, engine upgrades can be a very taxing process.

• 1:15:14

It especially becomes so given how many custom changes that a project makes to the engine,

• 1:15:20

making those merges over can be kind of a bit of a headache.

• 1:15:25

And we have a great team.

• 1:15:26

Our networking team has been doing a great job, Zach, has been spearheading that process

• 1:15:31

for the network changes along with Mitch.

• 1:15:34

And it took a little bit longer for us to make that move over because we initially started

• 1:15:39

moving over to 5.1 and then the 5.1.1 update dropped with a lot of great additions from

• 1:15:45

Epic and we decided to bite the bullet and just take it a step further to 0.1.1.

• 1:15:51

So I think that actually, Margaret, you would know this, that QA has their hands on that

• 1:15:57

now.

• 1:15:58

Yes, today.

• 1:15:59

So last night we did our build lock, like Steven said, for the last six weeks we've

• 1:16:03

been working towards this.

• 1:16:04

The next sprint for that team is going to be focusing on bug fixing.

• 1:16:09

So yesterday we locked the build.

• 1:16:12

We got a good dev build that we wanted to use as our basis and then we will be merging

• 1:16:16

that all up to our dev engine.

• 1:16:19

And hopefully everything will go well and we'll be able to move things.

• 1:16:22

We're locked today and then we should be unlocking again on Monday so people can check things

• 1:16:27

in.

• 1:16:28

I know designers are like, why?

• 1:16:31

Just bear with us one day, guys.

• 1:16:33

And we're doing a lot of testing.

• 1:16:35

We'll probably have a few bugs throughout the first couple of weeks, but we'll work

• 1:16:38

out those results.

• 1:16:39

And just so you guys know that what Margaret's referring to when she says check-ins and locking,

• 1:16:45

essentially our source control method, utilizing Perforce, is how developers make things and

• 1:16:52

they submit those things into Perforce.

• 1:16:55

And right now locking that down means that we're not allowing any additional changes

• 1:16:59

so that we can solidify that 0.1.1 update.

• 1:17:03

Otherwise you're merging into stuff that's not exactly the same and it can cause other

• 1:17:07

issues.

• 1:17:08

So we just want to make sure that we're...

• 1:17:10

We know what the basis is and then as we merge in, we'll be okay.

• 1:17:14

But yeah, the testing, I haven't looked at what the test results have been for that full

• 1:17:19

regression test yet.

• 1:17:20

I'll probably see that by the end of today.

• 1:17:23

And then if everything goes well, Monday we should be rocking and rolling and we'll just

• 1:17:27

be doing a lot of bug fixing for the next couple of weeks.

• 1:17:29

I know a lot of artists that are very excited to get their hands on the 0.1.1 update.

• 1:17:34

Yes.

• 1:17:35

I think all the departments were getting...

• 1:17:37

There were things that were blocking them.

• 1:17:39

I think TechArt was literally knocking down the doors like, what do I got to do?

• 1:17:45

We had our Intrepid Net stuff and things.

• 1:17:47

So there was just a lot of things that we were trying to resolve before we pushed that

• 1:17:51

up.

• 1:17:52

So we're good now.

• 1:17:53

We're moving up and we know there's going to be some bugs.

• 1:17:54

That's a little bit of a studio update by the way.

• 1:17:56

Yeah, there you go.

• 1:17:57

That should have been part of the studio update.

• 1:17:59

There's a lot going on all the time.

• 1:18:00

So we're constantly working towards things, homies.

• 1:18:06

But go back to the Q&A here.

• 1:18:08

We do have a question from Ruchis who wants to know about racial abilities.

• 1:18:13

Will any of your race or class choices affect your artisan skills?

• 1:18:20

That is something that is still up in the air a little bit.

• 1:18:23

We haven't touched too heavily on the racial ability side of things.

• 1:18:28

It is entirely possible that it might...

• 1:18:31

The concern there though would be that we want equitability across race types with at

• 1:18:36

least the benefits that...

• 1:18:38

Not the benefit types, but at least that you're having some benefits so that when we talk

• 1:18:43

about a crafter being pigeonholed into a specific type of race that might not align with what

• 1:18:48

they want to do elsewhere, they aren't forced to do that because of a specific racial ability

• 1:18:54

that only that race has access to.

• 1:18:56

So one thing we've talked about in the past is replacing the racial abilities with more

• 1:19:03

of a background style where you get to select your background regardless of race.

• 1:19:09

And so those two aren't tied intrinsically, but instead it's like, I'm an orphan who was

• 1:19:14

raised in the temple, therefore I have this racial trait, right?

• 1:19:18

I'm an urchin.

• 1:19:20

Right, exactly.

• 1:19:21

I think that's probably the direction that we're going to go in.

• 1:19:26

But yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

• 1:19:29

Perfect.

• 1:19:30

And then we've got Halcyon Days who wants to know about the threat meters.

• 1:19:36

Will there be a threat meter of any kind such as a tank only ability or aura within a certain

• 1:19:42

range?

• 1:19:43

Well, I know that this is a highly contentious topic.

• 1:19:47

There's DPS meter, tank meter.

• 1:19:50

I know.

• 1:19:51

I'm going to give you my-

• 1:19:52

They like meters, Steven.

• 1:19:53

I'm going to give you my subjective perspective here is that meters, in my opinion, are a

• 1:20:01

removal from the game immersion.

• 1:20:08

And what I mean by that isn't necessarily even the fact that having the meter kind of

• 1:20:13

takes you out of the game per se, but there's a lot of diegetic kind of approach that you

• 1:20:18

can take that doesn't rely on UI elements like a meter to kind of indicate how you should

• 1:20:22

do a thing.

• 1:20:24

And when you're not utilizing those types of meters, you can do different types of strategies

• 1:20:29

and encounter design, right?

• 1:20:31

You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away

• 1:20:35

by a meter indicating something.

• 1:20:38

And that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize.

• 1:20:44

And for that reason, we're not going to be including threat meters.

• 1:20:49

What we will be including, however, are animation indicators.

• 1:20:53

We're going to be including ability indicators to kind of show the tank like, hey, I might

• 1:21:01

be losing aggro here.

• 1:21:03

Like I am observing in the world these immersive elements that are not tied to any specific

• 1:21:08

type of UI, but indicate to me that this monster might be moving off to attack somebody else

• 1:21:13

in a very immediate future.

• 1:21:15

And now I should be using the abilities that I'm saving to kind of regain that aggro or

• 1:21:19

to lock them down with a taunt or something, right?

• 1:21:22

That to me is a bit more representative of the type of gameplay we want to bring in our

• 1:21:29

encounter design.

• 1:21:30

And for that reason, that's why we're not including threat meters.

• 1:21:35

Now that's different than a DPS meter, right?

• 1:21:37

The DPS meter to me was more about kind of what role DPS meters provide in online communities

• 1:21:43

that I've noticed in the past, my experiences.

• 1:21:46

They can be a bit toxic.

• 1:21:47

They can be a bit exclusive, exclusionary, excuse me.

• 1:21:52

And that's why we don't want the DPS meters.

• 1:21:54

The threat meters says we want to indicate threat.

• 1:21:57

We want to tell you, hey, you might be losing threat.

• 1:22:00

We just don't want to do that through a meter.

• 1:22:03

All right.

• 1:22:04

And our next question is from Armored Cell.

• 1:22:07

And it's about making friends.

• 1:22:09

Will all creatures be hostile?

• 1:22:11

And if not, could I, for example, give gifts to goblins to try and make them more friendly

• 1:22:16

to me?

• 1:22:18

Not all creatures will be hostile.

• 1:22:21

I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past when talking about like taming

• 1:22:26

and or certain types of like creature gatherable resources.

• 1:22:31

There are herds that exist out there.

• 1:22:33

There are big game that exist out there where they're not going to aggro and attack you

• 1:22:38

per se.

• 1:22:40

Also lower level monsters and certain type of like social monsters may not attack you

• 1:22:45

off the bat.

• 1:22:46

So not every creature is aggro.

• 1:22:49

We toyed with the idea early on of having kind of faction based reputation that could

• 1:22:55

change that dynamic between you and certain NPC factions.

• 1:23:00

While that exists in the non monster NPCs that live within nodes in our merchant guilds

• 1:23:07

or whatever, we haven't extended that out to the monster population.

• 1:23:12

And I don't know that we will in the first iteration or the first in the initial launch

• 1:23:17

for Ashes of Creation.

• 1:23:18

That might be something that we delegate to a future patch.

• 1:23:21

I'm not opposed to the idea.

• 1:23:22

I think it's a cool idea.

• 1:23:23

I think it's interesting.

• 1:23:24

I think it can be compelling and it plays into player agency.

• 1:23:27

But yeah, not for the first go around.

• 1:23:32

It's an endeavor.

• 1:23:33

And then Drunk Ninja wants to know about tanks and boats.

• 1:23:36

How will tanks hold threat on monsters while on a boat?

• 1:23:42

That's a good question.

• 1:23:44

So there's a few ways that you can do that.

• 1:23:49

One is boats have attachments that live on them.

• 1:23:54

Those could be potion launchers.

• 1:23:57

They could be other types of damage dealing attachments.

• 1:24:02

And users who are on the boat and utilizing those types of attachments will have the damage

• 1:24:08

assigned as a threat essentially as hate to them.

• 1:24:12

So if I'm shooting the potion launcher and I shoot a target, the damage I do gets assigned

• 1:24:16

to me as threat essentially.

• 1:24:19

But in addition-

• 1:24:20

Don't get them excited about potion launchers again.

• 1:24:22

I know.

• 1:24:23

I know.

• 1:24:24

Well, I love potion launchers.

• 1:24:25

Sorry.

• 1:24:26

I mean, you might have unique ammunition that can be used which amplify that threat.

• 1:24:31

But that doesn't discount the fact that your skill sets can still be used on boats and

• 1:24:36

or in water.

• 1:24:37

So as a tank, I'll have ranges on my taunts and on my hate generation abilities.

• 1:24:47

And I'm going to be expected to use those rotations in a nautical setting or on land.

• 1:24:52

So I think that that's acceptable.

• 1:24:56

And outside of that, I would say it's going to be relatively normal mechanics when it

• 1:25:00

comes to threat generation and utilizing your skill sets and rotations.

• 1:25:05

Right.

• 1:25:06

And then we've got a question here from Nick about detargeting.

• 1:25:11

Will there be detargeting abilities in Ashes of Creation?

• 1:25:14

Yes, there will be detargeting abilities in Ashes of Creation.

• 1:25:19

I think that one of the main applications for the ability to kind of detarget, excuse

• 1:25:26

me, in my opinion, there's two types of detargeting.

• 1:25:30

There's the ability to remove hate or aggro from myself, which might transit an enemy

• 1:25:38

target or pacify them.

• 1:25:42

But then in addition, if we think about PvP settings and the role of taunt or hate, a

• 1:25:50

lot of times for tanks in the MMOs that I've played, where you have a PvE and PvP scenario,

• 1:26:00

those types of hate generation abilities don't really have cross application into the PvP

• 1:26:03

realm.

• 1:26:04

And that can feel kind of bad because typically a tank build out can be delegated around how

• 1:26:11

I generate hate.

• 1:26:13

And if it has no cross application into PvP, then effectively you're creating a class composition

• 1:26:17

that just is not relevant in half of the game or in that area of the game.

• 1:26:23

So when we talk about how we're going to apply hate to player targets or taunt to player

• 1:26:29

targets, sometimes that can move into the realm of target switching or the ability to

• 1:26:35

demand that target on the tank in a PvP scenario as well.

• 1:26:40

It's something that we need to get player feedback on because there's a lot of strong

• 1:26:44

emotions around that type of mechanic.

• 1:26:47

I for one am a big proponent of that.

• 1:26:50

I think it's interesting.

• 1:26:51

I think that it plays into the role of the tank and that it hits a class fantasy that

• 1:26:57

most tank players want to feel.

• 1:27:00

And I think, however, on the flip side of that, it is a source of control.

• 1:27:04

And anytime you're under the effects of some source of control, it's going to be a feel

• 1:27:07

bad moment for the target that's being controlled.

• 1:27:10

So that's why I think it generates a lot of feelings on both sides of the aisle there.

• 1:27:15

But yeah, you should guys should opine on that.

• 1:27:17

Give us your thoughts, how you feel about those types of mechanics.

• 1:27:21

All right.

• 1:27:22

And then we've got a question about the summoner from The Pepper.

• 1:27:27

How will the summoner interact with threat management?

• 1:27:30

For example, would each summon have their own threat level?

• 1:27:34

Yeah.

• 1:27:36

So that's a very good question.

• 1:27:37

So summons exist within a kind of mini trinity in the sense that I can summon certain types

• 1:27:47

of pets that excel either as DPS, as support, or as a tank, essentially.

• 1:27:53

And the ones that serve the role of the tank, they will have their own taunt and hate generation

• 1:27:58

ability rotations as well.

• 1:28:00

That's the role of the summoner.

• 1:28:02

That's what's fun about a summoner in my opinion.

• 1:28:04

But in addition to that, there will be other mechanisms that are available for the summoner

• 1:28:09

themselves that don't live on the pet.

• 1:28:12

Some of those things might be the ability to transfer pain, which is essentially if

• 1:28:16

the summoner takes damage, then the summon takes a portion of that damage.

• 1:28:21

The same might be true for hate.

• 1:28:23

If the summoner takes hate, they can transfer a portion of that hate over to the summon

• 1:28:27

as well.

• 1:28:28

And then in addition to that, shit, I lost my train of thought.

• 1:28:35

Excuse me.

• 1:28:36

Shoot.

• 1:28:37

I lost my train of thought.

• 1:28:38

I don't know where I was going with that one.

• 1:28:41

It was a long night last night.

• 1:28:42

I think I went to bed at about 4 a.m.

• 1:28:44

Oh, my gosh.

• 1:28:45

I know.

• 1:28:46

Some people were saying you look kind of tired and that makes sense.

• 1:28:49

I'm sorry.

• 1:28:50

So I don't come to Vegas too often.

• 1:28:54

I came and I do like to play poker.

• 1:28:57

And I was playing poker.

• 1:28:58

My last meeting ended last night at like 1130 and I was walking past the poker room and

• 1:29:03

I was like, oh, there's like some poker games.

• 1:29:05

I'm going to go try poker.

• 1:29:06

And I ended up staying there till like four in the morning.

• 1:29:08

I like craps.

• 1:29:09

Oh, really?

• 1:29:10

Yeah.

• 1:29:11

Sorry to dice this, but it gets a little hectic sometimes at those tables.

• 1:29:14

Sorry.

• 1:29:15

Anyways, where I was going with the summoner.

• 1:29:17

Summoner.

• 1:29:18

There's different depending on the type of some pet.

• 1:29:21

Yeah, depending on the type of summon, you'll have access to those types of abilities.

• 1:29:24

So yes, that is intended as a mechanic for the summons.

• 1:29:27

Okay.

• 1:29:28

Hopefully that answered your question.

• 1:29:31

Basically I think the main thing was which each summon have their own threat level versus

• 1:29:36

like me as a summoner having like no, the the summon will have its own hate.

• 1:29:42

Yeah.

• 1:29:43

There you go.

• 1:29:44

Yeah, that's the answer.

• 1:29:45

And as I was wondering about death in war.

• 1:29:47

And by the way, that's not just for summons.

• 1:29:50

That's also for combat pets as well, which are agnostic class that those those are considered

• 1:29:57

its own entity on the hate list.

• 1:30:00

And this question is, are the death penalties for losing to guild war opponents in PvP equivalent

• 1:30:06

to the combatant ones or the non combatant ones or something else altogether?

• 1:30:10

No.

• 1:30:11

And I think this stems from because in sieges we stated that you wouldn't drop things the

• 1:30:16

same way and death penalties wouldn't be the same as in the open world.

• 1:30:20

Correct.

• 1:30:21

Yeah, that's correct.

• 1:30:22

And we have to think about those penalties applied in two different realms.

• 1:30:29

In a sanctioned event sanctioned, meaning that this is something you have the option

• 1:30:35

to opt out of.

• 1:30:37

That's a castle siege.

• 1:30:38

That's a node siege.

• 1:30:39

That's a caravan.

• 1:30:40

That's a guild war.

• 1:30:41

That's a node war.

• 1:30:42

Like you can drop your citizenship.

• 1:30:44

You can drop your guild tag.

• 1:30:45

You can drop participating in one of those things.

• 1:30:48

In any of those types of opt in and opt out events, the death penalties do not exist.

• 1:30:54

These are sanctioned.

• 1:30:55

They're intended to allow people to engage in PvP.

• 1:31:01

Now if I die to an NPC while I'm out hunting or if I die to another player through the

• 1:31:07

flagging system, those are where death penalties come into play.

• 1:31:14

And that's where dead experience can be earned.

• 1:31:16

And that's where corruption can be had.

• 1:31:20

So it's important to kind of separate those two realms.

• 1:31:23

All right.

• 1:31:24

And that is our final question.

• 1:31:27

We are going to wrap things up, but stay around for the end video.

• 1:31:32

Got a little-

• 1:31:33

Are we going to sign off with the teaser?

• 1:31:35

Yeah, sign off with the teaser.

• 1:31:36

Ooh, okay, cool.

• 1:31:37

I think that's fun.

• 1:31:38

What do you think?

• 1:31:39

Yeah, I think so too.

• 1:31:40

I think it's fun.

• 1:31:41

Everybody in chat is like, teaser now!

• 1:31:42

Teaser, get me the teaser.

• 1:31:43

All right.

• 1:31:44

With that, we just want to remind you to check out over on our forums, forums.AshesOfCreation.com.

• 1:31:52

We'd love for your feedback, especially on the UI stuff that you saw today.

• 1:31:56

We will have our Songs of the Goddess cosmetic swapping over on March 8th.

• 1:32:01

We also have a really cool calendar if you want to check that out over on AshesOfCreation.com

• 1:32:06

slash news.

• 1:32:08

You can download it and you can have a full year calendar for yourself with some really

• 1:32:11

cool Ashes of Creation art.

• 1:32:14

Very lovely art, I would say.

• 1:32:16

And of course, we want to say thank you to all of you for tuning in and watching.

• 1:32:19

We really appreciate your support and your continued support following along with our

• 1:32:23

journey through development.

• 1:32:25

We know not a lot of companies do this, so sharing our development progress is definitely

• 1:32:31

a long-term journey.

• 1:32:33

Making games is not an easy feat as much as people think it may be, and we will launch

• 1:32:37

when we are ready.

• 1:32:39

We assure you that our focus is making a great quality game, and we hope that you will have

• 1:32:43

fun whenever we are able to get your hands on it in Alpha 2.

• 1:32:47

And we also want to say thank you to Colby for joining us and sharing all the good UI

• 1:32:51

stuff and his lovely team.

• 1:32:53

And of course, Steven, thank you for your time.

• 1:32:55

I know you're very busy, but we appreciate it.

• 1:32:58

We hope that you all stay safe and healthy.

• 1:33:00

The VOD will be up on Twitch right away after we are done here, and then we'll also upload

• 1:33:04

it to our YouTube channel.

• 1:33:06

And if you leave us a comment on our next development update and you subscribe to our

• 1:33:11

channel, you may be spotlighted as one of our winners to be spotlighted in our next

• 1:33:15

dev update next month.

• 1:33:16

And of course, follow us in all the places, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all

• 1:33:20

the places, we're everywhere.

• 1:33:21

We constantly are posting almost every day for you guys, so we hope that you enjoy that.

• 1:33:26

And with that, we hope you enjoy a little teaser of what's to come in our next stream.

• 1:33:33

Bye guys, enjoy.

• 00:00

Hello everyone and welcome to our glorious February development update for Ashes of Creation.

• 00:21

We hope that you've been having a wonderful and lovely month.

• 00:25

If you haven't been following us, we did release a really cute calendar with lots of lovely

• 00:30

things.

• 00:31

Oh yeah, that was so cool.

• 00:33

Yeah.

• 00:34

I loved the little calendar.

• 00:36

Peter came up with the concept and I think Mike Vecchio was the one who put it together.

• 00:43

So social media and graphics team.

• 00:46

Like we always say, we have a different team that handles community stuff versus the lovely

• 00:51

development team that's rocking and rolling on the dev side.

• 00:55

Because I did notice some comments that were like, why are you guys working on this when

• 00:59

you should be working on the game?

• 01:00

Like they're different people.

• 01:01

Yes, there's a lot of people contributing.

• 01:07

Absolutely.

• 01:08

Yeah.

• 01:09

And our team is always trying to make sure that you guys have cool stuff and you get

• 01:12

to see all the things on the social media and things of that sort.

• 01:15

If you aren't able to keep up with us at every moment.

• 01:21

It was the month of love with the Valentine's day.

• 01:23

We had a little guess thing that Margaret did with the studio.

• 01:30

You put a bunch of candies in this heart-shaped vase and then you told everyone to guess.

• 01:39

We had a bunch of winners, didn't we?

• 01:42

Yeah.

• 01:43

I tried to use heart-shaped jelly beans because this is how nerdy our engineers are.

• 01:49

They're like, well, I know how much a jelly bean weighs.

• 01:52

They're like trying to math it out to guess.

• 01:54

It was really funny.

• 01:55

There were some artists that wanted to render actually the size of the heart-shaped in a

• 02:01

3D model, I think.

• 02:02

I heard.

• 02:03

It's too fun.

• 02:04

But yeah, I had like three different colors of jelly beans.

• 02:09

And so they guessed the overall and then each of the different colored jelly beans and the

• 02:13

two closest to each of them prices right style.

• 02:16

So you can't go over the guess.

• 02:18

I know.

• 02:19

I can announce them if you want.

• 02:21

It's more internal stuff.

• 02:23

Actually, afterwards when I found out kind of the prize and whatnot, I suggested that

• 02:29

the studio should have collaborated on all guessing one so that everyone would have tied

• 02:33

for first place and it would just been a studio wide pizza party.

• 02:36

Oh, see, next time you guys, he's letting us gamify it.

• 02:40

You're going to get yourself into trouble with that.

• 02:42

I'm not letting.

• 02:44

It's a game studio.

• 02:45

I'm surprised no designer said, hey, we should do this.

• 02:48

But yeah, Cody Yamamoto, because we have multiple Cody's, Trad Roy and Kyle Grossman and Cameron

• 02:57

and Jason Glenn and Mitch Evans and Matthew Lim all won.

• 03:00

So those were our winners, the closest guessers.

• 03:03

And the only person who guessed like spot on, I believe was, let me double check because

• 03:09

I wrote it because only one person guessed spot on number.

• 03:13

Wow.

• 03:14

Cameron got like the red candies exactly the amount, which was 154.

• 03:18

And then Kyle was the closest to getting almost all of them right because he was very close

• 03:23

on all the guesses except for the red ones.

• 03:25

I was like, dang, he was pretty good at like guessing how many were in the jar.

• 03:32

But yeah, it was kind of fun, just fun, just fun, internal stuff.

• 03:35

And then we had little candy, you know, like little candy treat bags for everybody as well.

• 03:39

Oh, that was cool.

• 03:40

We celebrated a little bit with the month of love for funsies and made a little game

• 03:44

out of it because, you know, we're game designers, game folks, game developers.

• 03:49

But with that, of course, we do have a lovely stream for you all today, which is going to

• 03:52

be just to if you've never been here before, down below you can see kind of what the run

• 03:57

of show will be, which we'll be going over reminders quick.

• 04:00

We have a UI update.

• 04:02

We actually had a chat with Colby, who's our UI UX lead or lead UI UX designer, I think

• 04:09

is the actual title.

• 04:12

And Stephen and I had a lovely chat with them and we will be playing that.

• 04:15

Yeah, we noticed.

• 04:16

Some people don't want to do live recordings.

• 04:19

Right.

• 04:20

Well, we noticed that last last month when we were showcasing the tank that there was

• 04:27

a lot of positivity around the direction of the UI styling and the UI windows that you

• 04:34

guys got to get a little sneak peek of.

• 04:36

And so for this month, we thought it would be a really great idea to kind of walk through

• 04:40

what updates are now existing in the UI lands for Ashes of Creation.

• 04:46

And it is it is a pretty in-depth process.

• 04:50

And I think you guys are going to be tickled to kind of learn more about it.

• 04:55

So it was a good conversation.

• 04:57

We've shown the process of how we create other things in the past, but we haven't gone over

• 05:00

necessarily the nitty gritty when it comes to UI.

• 05:04

So we hope that you guys like seeing that.

• 05:06

And we won't do all of all of things like this, but, you know, yes.

• 05:10

And one thing that's nice, one thing I want to make sure, though, as you guys are seeing

• 05:14

some of these windows.

• 05:15

So so the beginning of the kind of discussion is going to be more about the modularity and

• 05:21

the elements of the of the UI.

• 05:24

And then near the end of the conversation, we show some full on system windows.

• 05:30

Some of those are going to be crafting.

• 05:32

Some are going to be a few other things.

• 05:34

Remember, it is very important to remember that the we are still in active development

• 05:39

and what you see on those windows, because I know everyone out there is going to start

• 05:43

expecting and zooming and talking about all the little numbers and and details that live

• 05:49

on these system windows, that everything is subject to change through development.

• 05:55

So take that with a grain of salt.

• 05:58

Yeah.

• 05:59

And we will also be going over some character art.

• 06:02

And there's a little bit of a concept or environment that's part of that as well.

• 06:06

And then we'll do our studio update and questions and answers.

• 06:09

And then we have a little outro that a little teaser about what's to come.

• 06:13

So definitely stay all the way till the end.

• 06:18

But with that, we'll just get right into the quick updates.

• 06:23

And first and foremost, we have our YouTube subscriber comment.

• 06:27

So if you'd like your your comments spotlighted, all you have to do is follow our YouTube channel

• 06:32

or subscribe to our YouTube channel and comment on our development update.

• 06:35

So whenever we put this video up, we will be looking to see who folks who are subscribed

• 06:40

to us.

• 06:41

And this comment today is from Fish Toes 8901.

• 06:46

Maybe they're a Tolnar, but they asked, what are your plans for rewarding exploration?

• 06:53

For instance, will there be hidden secret quest lines or possibly secret doors, zones

• 07:00

that give no hints to being to being there?

• 07:03

But if you have a specific class group composition, you can use your synergies to open them up

• 07:09

and then be rewarded with either rare items or even better unique items that are limited

• 07:14

to either only one or very few per server.

• 07:17

We do have artifacts.

• 07:18

Yeah, absolutely.

• 07:20

Boy, their exploration is a huge part of the game.

• 07:25

And there are a lot of systems that are dedicated to rewarding exploration.

• 07:30

I don't know for many of you who have been following for a while now, circa 2018-2019,

• 07:39

we gave a few pre-alpha demonstrations around some utility spells, the ability kind of to

• 07:45

discover hidden tracks or doorways that can only be revealed through a mage's utility

• 07:52

spell of Arcane Eye or something.

• 07:54

And those can reveal passageways that might contain hidden quests.

• 07:59

They definitely grant exploration experience.

• 08:03

There are relics in the world that can only be discovered if you're in a certain location

• 08:08

at a certain time.

• 08:10

There are constellations that can only be seen at a certain time at a certain location.

• 08:16

So it's kind of widespread how exploration can affect many different progression paths

• 08:25

within the game.

• 08:28

And it's not just about kind of visiting an area once and never coming back because timing

• 08:33

matters as well.

• 08:35

So it's part of what makes an MMO an MMO is that immersive feeling, being able to go out

• 08:40

into the world and discover things and have those discoveries impact your gameplay to

• 08:46

a degree.

• 08:48

That's part of creating a holistic world that feels immersive.

• 08:52

So exploration is a very big part of Ashes of Creation and intersects with a lot of different

• 08:57

systems.

• 08:58

Yeah, explore, click things, look around, interact with people and NPCs who you don't

• 09:05

normally see.

• 09:06

There will be things for sure for you to do.

• 09:10

I remember in one game I played, they had these unique achievement, a unique achievement

• 09:18

system where they granted you items for kind of reaching unique locations within the world.

• 09:25

Like if you got to the top of a mountain for the first time, you would unlock a unique

• 09:31

achievement and that would grant you an item that you could then use economically in some

• 09:35

way, shape or form.

• 09:37

And we don't necessarily do that for just reaching certain vistas.

• 09:40

However, there are also treasures that can exist out in the world and maps that you can

• 09:46

find that take you and kind of encourage that exploration where you can reap a reward that

• 09:53

is economic in game.

• 09:56

So that's also another element.

• 09:58

Even in Alpha 1, we had a couple of little jumping puzzles and people who got there found

• 10:02

the treasure chests that were there that had lead in them.

• 10:04

Don't worry, we'll have stuff for y'all.

• 10:07

Tristan loved making those jumping puzzles.

• 10:09

I'm certain they do.

• 10:12

And of course, just a quick reminder of our monthly cosmetic swap over for Songs of the

• 10:16

Goddess that is scheduled for March 8th and we'll have our next set already for you as

• 10:21

well.

• 10:22

And reminder that these are things that we're going to be using for NPCs, creatures, buildings

• 10:26

and stuff like that in the world.

• 10:28

So our goal is to kind of utilize them for design orientatings.

• 10:34

And by the way, I noticed there's a few comments.

• 10:35

I apologize.

• 10:36

I'm not in the studio this week.

• 10:38

I'm actually in Las Vegas again.

• 10:40

There is a yes, there is a convention here for the gaming industry for executives and

• 10:47

kind of the business side of things in Vegas.

• 10:50

And so I'm here for that.

• 10:51

But I'll be returning back to the studio today.

• 10:53

I was just a quick trip.

• 10:54

I was here just a couple days.

• 10:56

Because you just left.

• 10:57

I know.

• 10:58

Like last night, right?

• 10:59

And then you're coming back today.

• 11:01

But yeah, you may see a few of us every once in a while at some of these events for this

• 11:06

year primarily for biz dev stuff.

• 11:08

So but if you see us, say hi.

• 11:11

Yeah, and if you're a developer and if you know any developers and you want to recommend

• 11:15

them to the studio, we will be at I will be at GDC and perhaps a couple more in the studio

• 11:20

will be at GDC next month as well, which is the Game Developer Conference up in San Francisco.

• 11:24

So just to keep thoughts.

• 11:27

And I'll be at PAX East and Gen Con this year.

• 11:29

So definitely come say hi if you're you're looking to chat with us.

• 11:34

Yeah.

• 11:35

Yeah.

• 11:36

And with that, I think we are ready to move on to our UI update.

• 11:39

I think we'll just toss it over there and we'll see you when we return back.

• 11:43

Yeah.

• 11:44

And I know you mentioned this real quick.

• 11:45

This was recorded a couple of days ago.

• 11:49

So you're going to see the discrepancy in the time of day.

• 11:51

It's nighttime.

• 11:52

But yeah, we had a lot of fun.

• 11:55

All right.

• 11:56

We'll see you in a moment.

• 11:57

And welcome a new face to our lovely development update.

• 12:07

We have Colby.

• 12:08

How are you doing?

• 12:09

Hello.

• 12:10

Welcome, Colby.

• 12:11

I'm doing really well.

• 12:12

Yeah.

• 12:13

Excited to be on the live stream.

• 12:15

I know this is the first time this is the first time we've ever actually had an in-depth

• 12:19

focus on UI in the game.

• 12:21

And I think it's going to be pretty interesting topic.

• 12:23

A lot of people are going to get some insight.

• 12:25

Colby, tell us a little bit about yourself.

• 12:27

Yeah.

• 12:28

Well, let's see.

• 12:29

Where to start?

• 12:30

I guess I've been a gamer for my entire life, as long as I've known.

• 12:35

What was the first game that you remember playing?

• 12:38

It came out of the room with Atari.

• 12:44

Let's see.

• 12:45

NES playing some Mario.

• 12:46

Yeah.

• 12:47

Nice.

• 12:48

Dying a lot.

• 12:49

But yeah.

• 12:51

So been a gamer my whole life.

• 12:54

Got into gaming after going to school for 3D art and being a concept artist.

• 12:59

And then eventually found my way into UI.

• 13:01

And I've been doing that for seven, eight years now.

• 13:04

So yeah.

• 13:05

Nice.

• 13:06

Awesome.

• 13:07

When it comes to UI, what's your favorite part about it?

• 13:10

What inspires you?

• 13:12

Yeah.

• 13:13

It's a mixture of things.

• 13:15

I love being able to use all my artistic skills that I've built up over the years.

• 13:19

But then it's a cool logical puzzle.

• 13:21

Where looking into how people react psychologically to different information.

• 13:27

Yeah.

• 13:28

Like a behavior element of design.

• 13:30

That always intrigues me too.

• 13:31

There's a lot of that when it comes to communications as well, which is a lot of behavioral stuff.

• 13:39

Whenever you're creating UI, it's not just you.

• 13:41

You've got some homies as well.

• 13:43

Do you want to talk a little bit about your team?

• 13:45

I know that was something you really wanted to do.

• 13:47

Be careful.

• 13:48

Once you start naming names like Steven does, you got to name everyone.

• 13:50

You got to get all of them.

• 13:53

Yeah.

• 13:54

No, we've been super fortunate here.

• 13:56

I came in and joined the team about a year ago and was joined the team with Grat and

• 14:00

Tim who are two of our UI engineers.

• 14:05

And then we grew the team pretty quickly on the UI art and design side.

• 14:08

So we've got Jeff, we've got Natalie, and we have Drew who are all helping make this

• 14:14

all happen.

• 14:15

So everything you'll see is going to be.

• 14:17

Yeah.

• 14:18

You guys have built actually a great team.

• 14:20

And for the longest time, many of you guys out in the audience will know as watching

• 14:26

the project over time that there hasn't been much love given to the UI front over the years.

• 14:32

But you probably now have seen, especially with our last stream, a little bit of the

• 14:36

peak under the hood for what's been going on with the UI team.

• 14:40

And they have been doing an absolutely stellar job.

• 14:43

I think we found the magic in this team.

• 14:47

So very excited for what you're going to show today, Colby, and the progress that everyone

• 14:51

on your team has made for the game.

• 14:53

I mean, it looks great.

• 14:54

Yeah, we always start with a lot of programmer UI and then it comes into the beautification

• 14:59

happens and we're now there.

• 15:01

Yeah, because before you get to the point where you are really understanding and cognizant

• 15:07

of the nitty gritty details that a particular system might have, some of that UI work can

• 15:11

be wasted when it gets reauthored or it gets refactored.

• 15:15

And now we're at a place where a lot of these GDDs and these systems are stood up and ready

• 15:22

to kind of have complimentary UI associated with it.

• 15:25

And that's what we, I think, are really excited about seeing that come to life, seeing the

• 15:30

style of it, seeing everything you guys are doing.

• 15:32

It looks great.

• 15:33

Yeah.

• 15:34

Yeah.

• 15:35

That's a great transition into the style element of it before we even get too crazy into showing

• 15:41

you the end goal.

• 15:44

There's a lot of elements that are the steps prior to that.

• 15:47

So I don't know if you want to first kind of walk us through what goes into creating

• 15:50

like a style guide for UI.

• 15:53

And if you want me to bring up anything on the screen, just let me know as well.

• 15:57

Yeah.

• 15:58

I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into building UI.

• 16:01

It's not just coming up with a bunch of things and throwing it onto screens.

• 16:08

We put a lot of thought into this and we wanted to take our time to build a real good style

• 16:11

guide so we can make sure our windows are consistent.

• 16:16

And yeah, we can start showing some of the stuff.

• 16:18

We can show you guys the process we went through.

• 16:23

So we'll first bring up...

• 16:24

Now you guys are going to be seeing, and Colby, if you want to talk just a little bit about...

• 16:28

Because a lot of people probably aren't accustomed to that modular approach and how you kind

• 16:32

of define these borders and whatnot.

• 16:34

Give them a little bit of context to what they're about to see.

• 16:36

They're going to see some of these elements and be like, what is this?

• 16:39

Yeah.

• 16:40

So we'll show you a lot of little pieces that are going to be part of a bigger picture eventually.

• 16:45

So we really start with like shape language and all these little components.

• 16:50

And we start designing out what are the motifs, these simple graphic elements that'll help

• 16:59

sell what is the Ashes of Creation UI?

• 17:02

What is it all going to look like?

• 17:04

And so we start with a lot of explorations.

• 17:06

This is just a small chunk of what we've worked through.

• 17:10

And we're using those to start building up and building up and make a cohesive style

• 17:15

that you'll see.

• 17:16

So these will be like the corners of your window frames.

• 17:19

And these will be what determines what the line breaks look like.

• 17:22

And I know it's all very subtle and a lot of people may not notice it all the time in

• 17:26

games, but we wanted to get a really nice subtle, but still fantasy style going through

• 17:32

here.

• 17:33

Right.

• 17:34

And there's a lot of different directions that UI can take.

• 17:37

Many of us who have played a lot of games can see the spectrum from really bulky, invasive,

• 17:43

heavy kind of elements that you're accustomed to from the late 90s to the early 2000s and

• 17:48

where the direction's gone for UI a little bit with more modern games and more minimalistic

• 17:53

approach.

• 17:54

Talk to us a little bit about kind of the differences in those philosophies.

• 17:57

Yeah, totally.

• 17:59

And it's definitely a flavor approach, right?

• 18:02

So people choose between one of those things.

• 18:05

And so one of the first things we always do is we gather tons of reference.

• 18:09

And so we're all sitting down in a room and we're saying, oh, what do we see as the ashes

• 18:13

of creation UI?

• 18:14

And we start picking from these different more complex and artistic or more subtle and

• 18:20

minimalistic or a balance of the mix.

• 18:23

Right.

• 18:24

And I remember some of the first conversations that you and I had with the broader team is

• 18:30

with those reference boards, kind of dialing in what that visual, you know, looks like

• 18:37

for Ashes of Creation.

• 18:39

And we saw modern takes on it.

• 18:41

We saw older takes on a traditional takes on it, bulkier takes on it and even the filigree

• 18:46

down to the very minute details of these borders and these and these corners like there's just

• 18:52

so many examples that live there.

• 18:54

You guys did a great job kind of condensing that feedback down into a very cohesive approach

• 18:59

for the style.

• 19:01

Talk to us about a little bit about like, you know, how you utilize these corners and

• 19:04

edges to kind of populate in a more modular fashion, the broader design of the UI.

• 19:10

Yeah.

• 19:11

So a big portion of what we do is kind of creating this like toolkit, basically.

• 19:17

So rather than having every time you go to a screen, we have something new.

• 19:21

It's here are all of these different things that we'll use to build a set of windows that

• 19:27

are all going to look like they're built the same way.

• 19:29

They're going to have a similar theme throughout.

• 19:31

And we build in engine, we'll build a bunch of these things as like components.

• 19:37

So when we go in like the first screens we built always take the longest because it's

• 19:42

going to be, you know, we're building all the little parts that we put in.

• 19:45

And then once we do a button, it's like, oh, hey, here's the button.

• 19:48

And then we'll keep populating those buttons throughout.

• 19:50

And then like we're trying to build as smart as possible because we have a pretty big game

• 19:54

ahead of us.

• 19:56

And so everything we're doing is built modular so that we can update in one place and it'll

• 20:01

go throughout the whole game.

• 20:03

So if we decide, hey, we want our buttons to be, you know, 10% brighter.

• 20:06

Here you go.

• 20:07

Quick.

• 20:08

Yeah.

• 20:09

Absolutely.

• 20:10

Yeah.

• 20:11

And as you can see.

• 20:12

And I'm showing some of these along the way.

• 20:13

Oh, go ahead.

• 20:14

Sorry.

• 20:15

Oh, yeah.

• 20:16

No, it's okay.

• 20:17

Yeah.

• 20:18

As you can see on screen, I mean, there were a ton of different explorations that we went

• 20:20

through here that, you know, we started with that really rough just shape exploration

• 20:25

and we picked our favorites from it after we kind of had like settled on a more, you

• 20:30

know, smaller, narrow set of styles.

• 20:33

And then we just explored what does that look like on a screen?

• 20:36

What does it look like, you know, with corner elements and line elements and breaks?

• 20:41

And then you can see we start putting them into windows so that we can share and get,

• 20:46

you know, feedback.

• 20:48

And this process takes a while, but it's totally worth it in the end.

• 20:51

So we have a really good foundation to keep moving forward from.

• 20:55

I think the next group you had here was the inventory process.

• 21:01

And this is kind of showing the process, like the walkthrough of like when you first start

• 21:04

designing stuff into what it looks like once it's in game, correct?

• 21:08

And so we'll start with the gray box if you want to talk a little bit about how that works.

• 21:13

Yeah.

• 21:14

So this is giving people a little bit of insight on how we approach different screens.

• 21:18

So the whole UI process usually starts with something like this, which is called UX.

• 21:23

So user experience focused design.

• 21:26

And so what we're doing is we're, you know, these are just a couple of small mocks based

• 21:30

like the document for the inventory is actually probably like four or five pages long.

• 21:35

And it goes over all the little details of how you interact with things.

• 21:39

And so actually that's a good part of the...

• 21:40

As a user, I would like to be able to click an icon and drag it from one box to another.

• 21:44

Like it's a lot of those little things that designers are designing.

• 21:48

And that's actually a good point to bring up as part of that initial ideation or that

• 21:54

pipeline flow.

• 21:55

You're reviewing these GDDs and understanding kind of what are the system requirements that

• 21:59

you from a UX perspective have to incorporate as part of these wireframes or as part of

• 22:03

these mocks.

• 22:04

Yeah.

• 22:05

So we work with designers constantly here.

• 22:08

We're talking with them about how to make their designs more user friendly and how to

• 22:12

accommodate what we want to make and make it the best version of it.

• 22:17

So we work back and forth.

• 22:19

We'll create these gray boxes, which can go over, like Margaret said, literally, like

• 22:24

how does it look like when you're dragging an item?

• 22:27

And it goes over all these little interactions because we will build these things and then

• 22:32

we'll pass them off to engineers who will hook it all up and make all the functions

• 22:35

work.

• 22:36

And those guys are trying to get every little detail working just right.

• 22:40

So it plays really great.

• 22:42

And the next step after the gray box is approved, we go to an art mock.

• 22:46

And so we take that style.

• 22:47

And if there's anything new, we start applying those things and showing what filters look

• 22:51

like and other things in that nature.

• 22:56

And when you're talking about filters, can you go a little into more detail regarding

• 23:00

what that is?

• 23:01

Oh, yeah.

• 23:02

So this one specifically is just like the filters on the backpack.

• 23:05

So if we want to be able to search for just equipment, we can click equipment and we're

• 23:10

going to show, hey, when we do that, we're going to fade out the icon so that you can

• 23:14

see just the equipment.

• 23:15

But we don't want to reorganize your whole inventory because we know how players are

• 23:18

about their inventory storage.

• 23:21

I'm very organized.

• 23:22

I like my stuff.

• 23:23

I'm kind of seedy about it.

• 23:25

Me too.

• 23:26

I'm as organized as the button that auto sorts my inventory.

• 23:30

Colby and I have like a love for organization.

• 23:35

I know whenever we're writing documents.

• 23:38

Yeah.

• 23:40

And then this.

• 23:41

Oh, no, it's okay.

• 23:43

Yeah, and this gets put straight into the game.

• 23:46

So kind of like what you've seen with our concepts, the 3D, we're kind of a little bit

• 23:50

more of a kind of siloed, not siloed, but we have a little small team that builds the

• 23:57

stuff all together and we work with the designers, we work with the engineers.

• 24:01

Your service oriented team, really.

• 24:03

These requests can come in from engineering, from design, from art or whatever.

• 24:08

And your guys' job is to kind of like understand where the request needs to service and do

• 24:12

deliver kind of that, those elements to those teams.

• 24:16

Yeah.

• 24:17

And we're the support team.

• 24:18

We come in and we help make the design come to life and be playable and interactable.

• 24:23

And then we get a lot of feedback and we build these things to be easy to change and work.

• 24:29

That's why we work so modular is because if something we play it and we're like, oh, that's

• 24:33

not quite right.

• 24:34

We can go and tune that and move it back and get it working just right.

• 24:38

And so that's showing here the concept coming right into the game and we have a whole toolkit

• 24:43

that lets us build these windows a lot faster now that we've assembled that.

• 24:48

Yeah.

• 24:49

And a lot of players, oh, no, no, no, I'm so sorry.

• 24:51

Go ahead.

• 24:52

I was going to say, and obviously we're just showing the inventory, but we do this with

• 24:55

like every piece of UI that we're going forward with and there's a lot of back and forth.

• 25:00

And obviously when we're creating these things, we're also keeping in mind a lot of the customization

• 25:05

that you guys want as well.

• 25:07

So there may be options in the future where you can change different colors.

• 25:12

And so those automatically adjust to everything for those specific elements and things of

• 25:17

that sort.

• 25:18

Especially for colorblind folks, we know that that's something that we want to support.

• 25:21

Yeah.

• 25:22

And I was just going to talk a little, that was what I was going to comment on was Colby,

• 25:27

share with our audience, I think kind of your philosophy when it comes to customizing and

• 25:33

options.

• 25:36

As a player, obviously, I know you have your own desires when you play these games.

• 25:39

Tell us how we're going to be doing things differently in Ashes.

• 25:42

Yeah.

• 25:43

We're going to have a basically everything in the game will be customizable as much as

• 25:48

we can support.

• 25:49

So all of our windows will be scalable.

• 25:52

All of our UI, we have a bunch of scaling options already exposed at this point in the

• 25:58

game.

• 26:00

And moving forward, we've already been working on a HUD editor.

• 26:04

You'll be able to uniquely scale all of your different HUD elements and potentially choose

• 26:10

for different styles of those elements.

• 26:14

It's going to be as much customization as we can fit in there, which we know how much.

• 26:20

It'll be very handy for streamers too, because a lot of streamers have specific UI colors

• 26:23

or they want their camera to be in a certain spot.

• 26:25

So you build, move stuff around the way that you kind of like it to be.

• 26:29

I feel like every MMO player plays differently.

• 26:32

I like my stuff kind of like in a specific space.

• 26:36

And I know that other people do not.

• 26:37

And some people who just have it all there, I'm like, it's so much stuff.

• 26:40

And it's not even that each player plays differently.

• 26:44

It's almost even role dependent.

• 26:47

Like when I'm playing a cleric, the positioning of my name plate for my targeting plate is

• 26:54

very different than if I'm playing a DPS, right?

• 26:57

Like I want that front and center.

• 26:59

I want to see the party list in the middle of my screen and have the target living in

• 27:04

the center as well.

• 27:06

But I don't necessarily want that when I'm playing a different role.

• 27:08

And so I think having that, as you mentioned, the customization options to kind of resize,

• 27:13

but not just resize, place in different locations and associate different connections and having

• 27:19

them hook into the side.

• 27:21

There's just a lot of ideas that we've discussed a lot with the UI team as a whole of like,

• 27:28

where's been our greatest pain point as players and how can we address those and the designs

• 27:32

that we're going to be emphasizing with our UI?

• 27:35

Yeah.

• 27:36

I see that kind of conversation happening more than just with UI.

• 27:40

I see that happening with when we're talking about web, when we're talking about design.

• 27:45

Colby's favorite thing is to see a designer in their GDD try to mock up the USA.

• 27:54

I live for those.

• 27:55

I'm always ashamed when I'm making graphic stuff because Colby and Mike are just amazing.

• 27:59

I'm like, oh, look at this stuff.

• 28:02

We have a full team of people.

• 28:04

They're great at that.

• 28:05

They do amazing work.

• 28:07

But obviously the desire there for a designer incorporating that as part of their GDD is

• 28:11

they're trying to communicate to Colby and the team, what are they trying to get out

• 28:15

of a particular system with UI?

• 28:18

And that's always a great informational piece, but you get a kick out of it sometimes.

• 28:22

Yeah.

• 28:23

And that's one of the strengths of our team too is people just know games.

• 28:27

We have a bunch of, we're not just developers, we're all gamers.

• 28:30

So everybody comes together and they're like, oh, well in this game it worked like this.

• 28:34

And that can give us a great lead on, oh, you want the design to kind of fit this world.

• 28:39

Okay, cool.

• 28:40

And I know that people are going to ask this specifically because of what you brought up,

• 28:46

Steven, in regards to different roles.

• 28:48

You want different types of UI layouts.

• 28:50

Will people be able to save a layout and be able to load it up based on what role they're

• 28:56

playing?

• 28:57

Oh, we've discussed that in the past.

• 28:58

That's absolutely a desire.

• 28:59

Is that as you, oh sorry, go ahead Colby.

• 29:02

You come.

• 29:03

Oh, it's okay.

• 29:04

No, yeah.

• 29:05

Sorry.

• 29:06

One of the first things we did when we were starting to kind of block in the very base

• 29:09

features of our HUD editor was talk about saving and loading profiles.

• 29:14

We're going to have options for like, hey, when I'm in a raid, automatically change my

• 29:19

UI to this.

• 29:20

Raid UI, yes.

• 29:21

Yeah, when I'm in a party, I can change my UI to a specific thing.

• 29:24

So it really will lend itself to customizing your experience.

• 29:27

And we want to have really our kind of a mantra is really solid defaults.

• 29:32

So most people won't need to touch anything, but then the customization for everybody who

• 29:36

wants to.

• 29:37

Yeah.

• 29:38

And that's always, you know, it's funny when we kind of have points of maybe contention

• 29:43

or subjective kind of differences that we as players talk about.

• 29:48

And time it lives in the I know absolutely there, but it lives in the realm between well,

• 29:53

what's default and then how are we giving the players the option to change that?

• 29:57

Right.

• 29:58

And that I think is is really the key in providing those things.

• 30:01

And as Colby said, like, you know, our objective, of course, on the default side is to make

• 30:05

it most applicable to a broad audience, but give the flexibility that you can do whatever

• 30:10

you want based on the many years you've been playing games and, you know, develop your

• 30:14

own idiosyncrasies or habits that you prefer.

• 30:16

Yeah.

• 30:17

I'm a weird player who plays with like I know a lot of people do was I'm like RDFG because

• 30:22

I like having more keys around my like hand to be able to hit buttons versus like not.

• 30:28

So I know and I know some people are like, that's so weird.

• 30:30

I don't know how you could do that.

• 30:31

But it's just like when you train yourself for, you know, 20 years, you get used to it.

• 30:37

But it's not forever.

• 30:38

I'm super weird as well.

• 30:39

I use I really only on my left hand use the hotkeys between Tilda and five.

• 30:46

And then I use a function to do the later hotkeys in the in the hotbar.

• 30:51

I do like control one control.

• 30:53

Yes, exactly.

• 30:54

I want everything to be easy to accept access.

• 30:56

I don't want to stretch my hand across the keyboard.

• 31:00

There's no button past six.

• 31:05

But and then there's some people who just like clicking stuff, which I know like some

• 31:07

people do that.

• 31:08

But it is very interesting to see how different people play.

• 31:12

And there's a right way and a wrong way.

• 31:13

I'm just kidding.

• 31:16

But we do have some more stuff to go through.

• 31:17

So I want to kind of get through that.

• 31:18

And it's you had a lot of iconography stuff.

• 31:21

So I don't know if you want to preempt this before we head into talking a little bit about

• 31:24

that.

• 31:25

Yeah, I mean, we can just look through these slides.

• 31:28

We've done a ton of iconography work and kind of similar to the similarly to what we're

• 31:33

going to be doing for like a style guide for the UI.

• 31:36

We're going to be building out style guides, small ones for each of the types of icons.

• 31:41

So these are showing like, you know, some ideation on the class iconography or the icons

• 31:48

that go at the edge of the different window treatments.

• 31:51

But yeah.

• 31:52

Oh, yes.

• 31:53

Sorry.

• 31:54

Archetypes.

• 31:55

Yes.

• 31:56

There are classes, too.

• 31:57

Yes.

• 31:58

But yeah, but also that's a good point, actually, bringing up the differences between the the

• 32:02

archetype and the class and how perhaps an icon can be promoted from its archetype state

• 32:09

up to the class state and still salvage that iconography from the base archetype.

• 32:13

True.

• 32:14

So you kind of know what your base, your primary archetype is based on like your class icon.

• 32:19

Yeah.

• 32:20

We're trying to get that whole idea locked down.

• 32:22

So when you can see someone, you can tell what they are and what I'm dealing with here.

• 32:27

So yeah, that's the primary purpose, right?

• 32:29

Of these types of UI elements is communicating that information.

• 32:33

I mean, UI's whole purpose is communicating the information to the player.

• 32:38

But at a glance with these particular icons, right?

• 32:40

And that's the whole, you know, I'm getting an understanding and I'm familiar with that

• 32:44

sword because it's the tank or something.

• 32:47

Yeah.

• 32:48

Yeah.

• 32:49

I mean, it's it's a fine line for UI of like making something very, very like aesthetically

• 32:53

pleasing but also making sure, you know, satisfies that like base information it needs to tell

• 32:58

me.

• 32:59

So here you can see some of our ideation between the ability effects and how we go from, you

• 33:04

know, quick, you know, sketches and moving them forward into ability icons.

• 33:10

And we're going to have different like styles for different size of things, too.

• 33:13

So you know, ability icons are all going to fall into one style.

• 33:16

And then like if we do a class emblem, it'll be more detailed.

• 33:19

If we do something really tiny, it's got to be really simple, as you can see with like

• 33:23

these ones on the right here.

• 33:24

They're just going to be.

• 33:25

Some of them are map oriented, so they have to be able to you to be able to see them and

• 33:29

understand what they are when they're like one by one pixel.

• 33:33

Yeah.

• 33:34

And the graphic ones are the hardest ones to do because they're just you have to tell

• 33:37

me what that is right there.

• 33:39

Yeah.

• 33:40

Mm hmm.

• 33:41

Yeah.

• 33:42

So we've done a lot of great work on these.

• 33:45

Natalie and Jeff have done a ton of awesome explorations on these.

• 33:48

Natalie has been doing all the painting for the class abilities you guys have seen in

• 33:53

the last live streams, and they've just been fantastic.

• 33:56

Very, very cool.

• 33:59

I love the the vivid nature of these icons, especially for the ability icons.

• 34:06

The strong contrast that exists within the icon itself that lends to that easy communication

• 34:12

of the ability recognition is super important.

• 34:16

Yeah, we're hoping to have a really awesome set of icons for you guys.

• 34:21

Yeah.

• 34:22

All right.

• 34:23

Yeah.

• 34:24

And with that, I think we're going to move into some like actual mocks that are in game,

• 34:29

but yeah, I not quite in game.

• 34:32

Well, some of them may be in game, but yes, these are just going to be the art mocks for

• 34:38

what we've built so far.

• 34:39

There's some extra ones that are in the works and things that are partial, but these ones

• 34:43

are yeah, nice.

• 34:44

Take a look at these.

• 34:45

We're going to be talking a little bit about kind of feedback.

• 34:49

These are going to be inspected like crazy.

• 34:52

I know they're going to zoom in on every little thing.

• 34:55

So now I would like to preface, though.

• 34:58

For those of you who are going to zoom in on every little detail that as always, this

• 35:04

is a work in progress and things are subject to change.

• 35:09

Some things are even placeholder in these.

• 35:13

So take it with a grain of salt.

• 35:15

Yeah, not everything is built 100% accurate.

• 35:19

So every single system, these are just mocks to get everything, especially as people play

• 35:24

more of the game.

• 35:26

People will be adjusting things and changing things and seeing what works and what doesn't.

• 35:30

So when Alpha 2 comes around, that's when the feedback is going to be very, very important.

• 35:37

So this is kind of a, we wanted to include this, which is showing like all of the different

• 35:41

buttons and accordions and filter buttons and drop downs that we use to build all these

• 35:48

different screens.

• 35:49

So combined with the style guide that we had before, we're going to use these and we build

• 35:54

out all of our screens, which you'll see here.

• 35:55

The reason why they're called accordions is because it opens up.

• 35:57

These are things that open up and kind of expand.

• 36:01

So you can see more of your quests or more of whatever it is.

• 36:05

And whenever you interface with this particular UI element, it actually plays the audio cue

• 36:09

of an accordion in the background.

• 36:10

Yeah.

• 36:11

That'd be fun.

• 36:12

I just poked it the whole time.

• 36:13

Don't give Kat a heart attack.

• 36:14

She's like, what are you getting me into?

• 36:17

Also our audio is amazing too.

• 36:20

Not only does UI interact with design and engineering, but they're also working with

• 36:23

audio and visual effects.

• 36:26

There's a lot of coordination that has to happen for all these things.

• 36:29

Oh yeah.

• 36:30

Yep.

• 36:31

Next one here is dialogue.

• 36:32

And I think there's a couple dialogue ones, right?

• 36:35

Yeah.

• 36:36

We show a couple of different steps.

• 36:37

So this will be like when you're talking to an NPC, going through your potential options

• 36:43

of what you can talk about.

• 36:45

You could ask additional questions or you could jump straight into a quest, hook, whatever

• 36:50

it happens to be.

• 36:51

So some of our base treatments here.

• 36:54

And then this is the quest delivery.

• 36:56

So if you're talking to that NPC and they have something for you to start a task, we'll

• 37:02

present this as a, make your choice.

• 37:04

Do you want to start this task right now and give you the details that we have?

• 37:08

And some objectives may be hidden depending on the quest.

• 37:12

All right.

• 37:13

And then move on to, go ahead, Steven.

• 37:17

I was just going to say, you know, it's a lot of, I've seen a lot of interesting iterations

• 37:24

for how quest gets delivered.

• 37:27

You know, from when I interface with an NPC, I move into this kind of alternate camera

• 37:31

mode and I have the NPC kind of talking to me with, I have the bar underneath it.

• 37:36

But I think that, you know, when you're servicing multiple dialogue trees that have many different

• 37:41

options, this approach is really conducive to kind of, you know, keeping those options

• 37:49

front and center to the player, letting them see that and navigating through the dialogue

• 37:54

tree with a very easy to interact with quest window.

• 38:01

And we even did it that other way that you've mentioned in our previous.

• 38:05

Yes.

• 38:06

In Alpha 1.

• 38:07

Yeah.

• 38:08

And one of the iterations for UI as a placeholder was really that long bar at the bottom screen

• 38:13

kind of approach.

• 38:16

I'm really liking this.

• 38:17

It'd be great to get feedback as you guys are kind of watching this.

• 38:20

As always, it's very important for you guys to get feedback and what you're seeing.

• 38:23

It's, I know we'll talk about that at the end, but yeah, I do love these.

• 38:29

These look great.

• 38:30

Yeah.

• 38:31

And the backpack, which people got a little glimpse of some of this when we were showing

• 38:35

our live stream last month.

• 38:38

Yeah everything's coming online, becoming a little bit more usable and functional.

• 38:42

And we're just, our main goal as UI is to get things in game and usable so that we can

• 38:47

really test it because ultimately you can design anything on paper, but really you got

• 38:52

to get your hands on it in order to.

• 38:54

Absolutely.

• 38:55

I like, I think we saw a lot of commentary in regards to segmenting the backpack into

• 39:00

different, you know, like harvestables and things like that.

• 39:04

Yeah.

• 39:05

Gatherables I should say in quest items.

• 39:07

People really liked seeing that.

• 39:09

Oh absolutely.

• 39:11

Especially with the way our game's going to work with the materials being a little bit,

• 39:14

you know, of a different interaction.

• 39:16

So yeah.

• 39:18

And then the quest items is that quality of life because as MMO players, we all know searching

• 39:23

for the, you know, one vial that's not the vials of your potions, but it's the quest

• 39:28

items.

• 39:29

Absolutely.

• 39:30

And it's always great to have in the quest tracker that actually is living on the HUD

• 39:33

with you, that accessibility for the item.

• 39:36

So you don't have to go digging for an activatable per se.

• 39:39

Oh my gosh.

• 39:40

Yeah.

• 39:41

We'll be doing that too.

• 39:42

Supporting.

• 39:43

Like has that support right there for you.

• 39:45

It's nice.

• 39:46

Yeah.

• 39:47

Or something that you can drag on your, to your bar easily.

• 39:48

Things like that.

• 39:49

Yeah, exactly.

• 39:50

And then we've got blacksmithing.

• 39:51

I know that people are going to be very excited to see this.

• 39:56

Oh my God.

• 39:57

This is the first look I think we've shown of the crafting systems.

• 40:03

And this is kind of our fast crafting.

• 40:04

So not necessarily what we will be end goal, right, Steven?

• 40:09

Yeah, absolutely.

• 40:10

Yeah.

• 40:11

Talk, talk to us a little bit, Colby, about kind of designing for the kind of crafting

• 40:16

needs.

• 40:17

Yeah.

• 40:18

We work with designers a lot on these.

• 40:19

So we've been talking with them about everything they want to get done.

• 40:22

So this one is showing kind of the base needs that we were establishing to get this system

• 40:28

in game and usable as soon as possible.

• 40:30

So right now our crafting does work in game and it's all functional and we're building

• 40:36

out the functionality as we go to expand and based on what we test.

• 40:41

And there's a lot of information you have to communicate via this window, right?

• 40:46

How do you kind of blend between the idea of multiple sub pages that are required to

• 40:52

kind of facilitate all the information versus how much you can show on one particular page?

• 40:56

Like talk to us a little bit about that process.

• 40:58

Yeah, and this is where that game of, you know, understanding how to organize the information,

• 41:04

right?

• 41:05

So we're creating kind of what we like to call like a visual language.

• 41:08

So a lot of our panels you'll see they'll have that left side accordion list, which

• 41:14

is like a real, you know, if we have a lot of dense information, we like to use these

• 41:17

accordions because you can, you know, have a shorter list and then expand out the parts

• 41:22

that you're interested in.

• 41:24

And then we kind of do that same thing where it's context.

• 41:26

So you start on the left and you'll move to the right.

• 41:29

So you make a selection and then there's like details on the right.

• 41:32

And we try to create what we call like visual hierarchy to help you know, like, okay, I've

• 41:38

clicked this and now I move over here and I've got, you know, buttons over here that

• 41:42

are, you know, the only other bright objects on the window.

• 41:45

So it pulls me to say like, okay, I can look and see if I can craft this or whatever it

• 41:50

happens to be.

• 41:51

And there's going to be, you know, some pretty robust systems.

• 41:54

So we're really excited to see when we get our hands on it, where we're, you know, where

• 41:58

we can make it better.

• 41:59

Absolutely.

• 42:00

Yeah.

• 42:01

That is a very important component of the testability and the primary purpose of Alpha

• 42:06

2, as we've always stated, is going to be to get player feedback, to get player hands

• 42:09

on you know, giving us direction on how these things play out.

• 42:16

It's such an important part of being a tester.

• 42:18

So definitely it's very valued.

• 42:21

Yeah, definitely.

• 42:22

Folks did see the journal a bit last time.

• 42:25

I saw a lot of commentary regarding that.

• 42:28

Yeah.

• 42:29

A lot of great feedback, positive feedback about the journal, both from color composition

• 42:33

to layout design to, you know, a lot of different things.

• 42:37

Colby talked to us a little bit about kind of how you guys approached this style of introducing

• 42:43

such a broad spectrum of colors.

• 42:45

I feel like.

• 42:47

Yeah.

• 42:48

We actually used the journal as one of our test cases for the style guide, because it's

• 42:53

a very complex screen.

• 42:54

There's a lot of things that are going on where we have different tiers of story arcs

• 42:59

that might be available for players.

• 43:00

And so we wanted to make sure the color denoted different information for them.

• 43:04

We also have iconography to support that as well.

• 43:08

And we kind of have a little bit of a twist on what a traditional quest system would be

• 43:13

like.

• 43:14

So with these story arcs, we wanted to make sure that it was organized in a familiar way,

• 43:19

but also something that supported all of the design's needs.

• 43:23

We really like how it came out.

• 43:24

Yeah.

• 43:25

And we have a little bit more in depth slash complicated story arc system than you might

• 43:30

find in most of your traditional MMORPGs and how those kind of story arcs can be updated

• 43:36

in real time and kind of how players interface with different segments of that story arc.

• 43:42

So this journal has to facilitate all of those designs, which can make it, as you said, one

• 43:49

of the most complicated, probably, windows that we utilize for characters outside of

• 43:54

probably the mayoral interface.

• 43:55

That's just going to spark more questions about like, hmm, what do you mean?

• 44:00

How is this going to go?

• 44:03

But perhaps that's going to be a future thing.

• 44:05

We definitely need to have some more of our narrative folks on sometime and talk a little

• 44:09

bit about that.

• 44:10

I think Carfen might be a great opportunity for that.

• 44:15

That's true.

• 44:16

And if you did watch our extra live stream, you got a little teaser of some lore there.

• 44:20

And then next up, and we're also later in this live stream, we're going to be showcasing

• 44:25

some teasers as well.

• 44:28

Next month's live stream.

• 44:30

And we've got options, which for most of us, it's one of the first things that we experience

• 44:36

in game, we're like, let me adjust all the things to be the way that I like them.

• 44:40

I want the FOV to be where I want.

• 44:42

I want the audio to be where I want.

• 44:44

And this requires even more elements for you guys to interact with and adjust.

• 44:50

I'm sure that this was probably even more complicated to put together.

• 44:54

Yeah.

• 44:55

Well, and this is where that having a really strong visual language and making that information

• 45:00

really accessible and organized in a good way was really just very important to us.

• 45:06

So one of the other screens that we hit first, not exactly the thing everybody's like, oh,

• 45:11

let me see the options, but very important when we do get them out there in your hands.

• 45:17

I think people will be happy because last, an alpha one, we had like one slider and they

• 45:22

were like, we're constantly getting folks asking for more options.

• 45:26

There'll be a few more sliders.

• 45:29

You'd be surprised.

• 45:30

I don't find myself as a player interfacing with the options menu in many games very often.

• 45:35

I do, like you said, kind of at the start of my gaming experience.

• 45:38

But when I'm in the middle of a game and there's some option that I've newly discovered that

• 45:42

as like, oh God, I need to change this and I need to change it fast.

• 45:46

And I opened that options menu and it is just an absolute cluster.

• 45:49

I'm like, oh, this is terrible.

• 45:51

I need to now spend so much time here.

• 45:54

So easy, intuitive navigation is definitely an important aspect of this, of the options

• 45:58

menu for sure.

• 45:59

Yeah, definitely.

• 46:00

We'll be testing that a lot.

• 46:02

Yes.

• 46:03

Yeah.

• 46:04

So if you could only toss us your thoughts on that or what options you like.

• 46:08

Obviously, this doesn't have everything in there, but it's giving you kind of a glimpse

• 46:13

into the future.

• 46:14

And our character screen, which we have shown various different versions of this throughout

• 46:22

the lifespan of Ashes of Creation.

• 46:24

I know, yeah.

• 46:25

It's gone through many, many iterations.

• 46:28

And I know there's been a couple that people haven't liked, a few that people have liked.

• 46:33

I know that there's always a lot that you have to display here.

• 46:37

And so I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, Colby.

• 46:40

Yeah, we were building this out and we wanted to kind of create something that would handle

• 46:45

a couple of different roles with obviously your equipment slots for what we call a paper

• 46:51

doll, which is that display of your character.

• 46:53

Eventually, it won't just be a image of your character.

• 46:55

We hope to have the 3D character and be able to rotate around, look at what you're wearing.

• 47:02

And then we wanted to support a couple of different features here with some base stats,

• 47:06

the equipment, which will show what equipment you have available to quick swap so you don't

• 47:11

have to have your inventory and the screen open.

• 47:14

Detailed stats for those people who want to get into all of the details.

• 47:18

And then, of course, gear sets.

• 47:20

So this is going to be able to swap your sets of gear quickly and being able to save different

• 47:26

loadouts.

• 47:28

We know all the players who have two sets and there's players who have hundreds of sets.

• 47:32

So yeah, I got all my costumes too, you know, of course.

• 47:37

Of course.

• 47:38

Yeah.

• 47:40

So this has been a lot of the stuff that we've worked on over the past year.

• 47:44

We've built out the style guide while supporting all these live streams.

• 47:47

And it's just been awesome to see this team get up and running in such a short time and

• 47:52

get a ton of work in.

• 47:53

Yeah.

• 47:54

And you have definitely been supporting a lot of teams.

• 47:56

I know a lot of the things that we're showcasing each month, you know, you guys have some semblance

• 48:02

of little bits and pieces that you're kind of showcasing in there.

• 48:05

So like Stephen said, this is the first time we're like just focusing on UI, which I think

• 48:10

is kind of exciting.

• 48:12

And probably talk to us a little bit about kind of the types of feedback you like to

• 48:16

see from a demonstration like this of the UI.

• 48:20

Yeah.

• 48:21

I mean, just general, like people's feeling of these things.

• 48:25

The best feedback will of course be when you guys are able to get your hands on it.

• 48:28

But if you guys have real strong opinions on, hey, I want to see these kind of things

• 48:32

in my journal and, you know, we've got a lot of features planned and we have a lot of good,

• 48:41

you know, options available and there's going to be things that you haven't seen, you know,

• 48:44

like maybe your journal ties into an archive that has a little bit more of that lore background

• 48:50

in it and it keeps track of what maybe stories you've participated in.

• 48:55

So we've really, you know, we're building this out.

• 48:57

Oh, sorry.

• 48:58

Sorry.

• 48:59

I'm sorry.

• 49:00

Go ahead.

• 49:01

But yeah, we're just building this out, you know, part by part and we're going to be supporting

• 49:04

the team.

• 49:05

So if you guys see stuff that you really like, you know, make sure to throw a thumbs up out

• 49:10

there, make a post or comments because we do, you know, we do read all of this stuff

• 49:15

and we try to make sure that we're, you know, seeing the feedback people are giving.

• 49:20

Absolutely.

• 49:21

Especially.

• 49:22

Go ahead.

• 49:23

Go ahead.

• 49:24

We'll be putting up a thread.

• 49:25

It'll probably be up right now, right meow, over on our forums, forums.ashisofcreation.com.

• 49:32

Check it out over there.

• 49:33

Definitely leave us some thoughts on our UI.

• 49:35

We'll have a few questions that are good, like starters for you.

• 49:38

But definitely tell us what you'd like to see, some features that you'd like to see,

• 49:42

some features you liked from the displays that we showed today.

• 49:45

And we will be creating a report for the UI team and providing that.

• 49:51

Roshan and Vaknar are always so great about putting those together and they're super in-depth.

• 49:56

They read through everything, which makes it very easy for the design team and development

• 50:00

team to be able to quickly read through those and get a good overview of kind of your guys'

• 50:05

thoughts and feelings and suggestions.

• 50:07

You guys always have some great ideas as well.

• 50:10

And always make sure to incorporate as part of your feedback, you know, the examples and

• 50:16

inspiration for you that you've experienced that did things well from a UI.

• 50:21

What stands out about a game that you think had great UI?

• 50:24

What was it about that game that you felt was great with regards to their UI?

• 50:29

And what were some examples of games that had bad UI and why did you feel that it had

• 50:33

bad UI?

• 50:34

Those are great like cornerstone touch points on how to give good feedback is always using

• 50:39

those references, right?

• 50:40

Because it's there that we can find better detail-oriented kind of inspection.

• 50:46

So yeah.

• 50:47

Definitely.

• 50:48

Yeah.

• 50:49

Give us your feedback.

• 50:50

And with that, I do want to give you a chance, Colby, to kind of do a little plug.

• 50:54

I know you have one, of course.

• 50:56

And then anything else you want to say at the end of here before we head on over to

• 50:59

our character art segment?

• 51:01

Yeah.

• 51:02

So, well, our UI team has grown quickly over the past year, but we are looking for one

• 51:06

more UI artist or UX designer.

• 51:10

We're looking for someone to help join the team and kind of build this out with us.

• 51:14

So if you guys are, you know, if you have some experience, please send us your resume.

• 51:19

Absolutely.

• 51:20

Apply.

• 51:21

Get out there and help us raise awareness.

• 51:23

Yeah.

• 51:25

And the other thing is, you know, I just want to give thanks to our team because our team

• 51:29

is awesome.

• 51:30

We work really hard and we have a really nice diverse set of people who are able to accomplish

• 51:36

all of these different tasks while we're able to, you know, help this game come to life.

• 51:40

So we're just very fortunate.

• 51:43

We got a great team over here.

• 51:44

All right.

• 51:45

Well, definitely head on over Intrepidstudios.com.

• 51:48

If you are interested or if you know somebody forward along that position, we'd love to

• 51:53

fill it with someone who is amazing to join our Intrepid family.

• 51:58

And with that, we're going to say thank you, Colby.

• 52:00

We're going to head on over to our next segment, which is our character art update.

• 52:04

So we will see you momentarily.

• 52:06

Bye, Colby.

• 52:07

Thank you.

• 52:08

Thanks.

• 52:09

See you guys.

• 52:10

Welcome back.

• 52:11

We hope that you all had fun.

• 52:14

That was an in-depth exploration of the UI process.

• 52:17

Very much so.

• 52:19

And it seemed like you all really, really enjoyed that.

• 52:22

We hope that you did.

• 52:23

It seems like y'all did.

• 52:25

And obviously, like Stephen mentioned, there are a lot of it's work in progress.

• 52:29

It's not final, but we will have a lot of customization, a lot of options, as we noted

• 52:34

in there.

• 52:35

And I can't wait to go on the Reddit later and just see all the speculation and hypotheses

• 52:42

and theory crafting about these windows.

• 52:47

And of course, you guys will be able to see some more of them.

• 52:50

We usually share a lot of the pieces throughout the month.

• 52:56

So definitely keep an eye on our social for those things.

• 52:59

But I did want to cover a couple different questions that Vagner and Roshan tossed my

• 53:03

way.

• 53:05

These were kind of side things, which is people are wondering if they'll be able to share

• 53:09

UI layouts.

• 53:10

So let's say I have a UI layout that I really like.

• 53:12

Is that something that we may have options to share?

• 53:15

Or is that something we could explore in the future?

• 53:18

That can be a little bit difficult.

• 53:22

We've talked about it in the past, but there are unique elements that would be exposed

• 53:27

for certain classes and or characters that might not be for others.

• 53:33

And that data might be difficult to have transferable or shareable.

• 53:39

But it's something that we're not shying away from looking into.

• 53:42

So no definitive answer yet on that.

• 53:44

And I know we did say that UI will be customizable.

• 53:47

You will be able to move stuff around, scale things the way you'd like.

• 53:51

In most games, you always are able to add extra action bars or ability bars.

• 53:55

And they're curious if that's going to be something because we didn't say it explicitly.

• 53:58

Yes.

• 53:59

Yes.

• 54:00

Absolutely.

• 54:01

And so, short of customization that we want to provide each player, because some people

• 54:06

like to have a very minimalistic number of hot bars.

• 54:09

They don't need necessarily to have three, four, five hot bars that are available.

• 54:13

But some people do like that.

• 54:14

They want to have all their items listed on their hot bar, as well as their abilities,

• 54:18

as well as their mounts, as well as anything that they can essentially interact with as

• 54:24

an icon.

• 54:25

They want to place it somewhere on a hot bar that's visible.

• 54:28

So the breadth of customization should encompass those desires from the more minimal to the

• 54:33

heavier player type.

• 54:36

And when we're in our betas and we have a lot more of that stuff accessible to you all,

• 54:40

if you have any feedback along the way, we're all ears.

• 54:43

You've seen our journey along the way.

• 54:45

We're constantly taking y'all's feedback.

• 54:47

And maybe we won't be able to implement stuff immediately, but we'll definitely be taking

• 54:51

your feedback and communicating with you all along the way.

• 54:57

And then the last one here was, will there be weight capacity?

• 55:00

There's been a lot of questions in regards to that.

• 55:02

That's not really UI related.

• 55:04

There's not weight capacity.

• 55:07

Weight management, in my opinion, and this is of course subjective, but weight management

• 55:12

is not a compelling mechanic for players to have to deal with in an MMO setting.

• 55:19

It can be for sure in a survival game type mode or in other types of games.

• 55:25

But really we want to focus on spacing and we want to focus on stack size, those kind

• 55:32

of supplement where weight would be relevant.

• 55:35

This is more about how much capacity do I have?

• 55:39

What are the shapes and sizes of the different types of materials and or gatherables that

• 55:42

I might acquire?

• 55:45

And how does that fit into my gatherable bags?

• 55:50

And what are my stack limits?

• 55:51

And how can those stack limits be kind of augmented or changed based on the bag type

• 55:56

or quality that I purchased from a crafter or my expertise within a particular profession

• 56:01

when I'm gathering resources out in the wild?

• 56:04

That's where we want to kind of make those choices be more relevant and compelling.

• 56:10

Right.

• 56:11

And with that, I think we're ready to move on to our character update.

• 56:15

So we'll be doing that.

• 56:19

Let's show all the things.

• 56:20

There's so many cool things.

• 56:22

And like I said, stay till the end.

• 56:24

We've got a little teaser for you guys at the end.

• 56:27

We have a little video teaser.

• 56:28

You got to stay for that.

• 56:31

So with that, we will first kick things off with we've got you guys did see some Cyclops

• 56:36

weapons before, but now there's even more Cyclops weapons, which these are looking very,

• 56:42

very awesome.

• 56:46

I'm sad actually because I don't have my extra monitor.

• 56:50

So you can't see.

• 56:51

I know.

• 56:52

I can't see.

• 56:53

What are we looking at?

• 56:54

In the run of show, I usually always have all of the images.

• 56:55

I know, but I don't have it.

• 56:59

But these are the Cyclops weapons.

• 57:00

There's mace, bow, wand, all the goodies.

• 57:07

I'm looking on my phone.

• 57:08

I apologize to the audience if I'm looking on the phone.

• 57:11

Yeah.

• 57:12

You know, to give you guys an idea, the Cyclops, which you'll be seeing at some point here

• 57:16

in the very near future is and you guys have seen the model for it already in the past,

• 57:21

right?

• 57:22

Some parts.

• 57:23

Some parts.

• 57:24

It is a very large, like 45 or 50 foot.

• 57:28

I think it's like over.

• 57:29

He's carrying a tree in one of the images.

• 57:31

Yeah, it's like a 50 foot tall, giant raid boss.

• 57:36

And he has a lot of like natural oriented weapons that are available that he uses.

• 57:45

And I think the character team just did a great job with these.

• 57:48

They really kind of, I think, reflected the nature of that particular creature, which

• 57:54

is always cool to have because it ties you into that story.

• 57:57

It ties you when you acquire this thing or cool.

• 57:59

You got to have some cool Cyclops loot.

• 58:04

And also, you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about car from here because

• 58:07

we're to show some cool car from weapons.

• 58:09

But look at these weapons.

• 58:10

They're so sick.

• 58:11

And I heard that y'all got your bingo card.

• 58:14

The community puts together like a little bingo card or things that they think we're

• 58:18

going to talk about in the live stream.

• 58:20

I always love seeing how they get a bingo card.

• 58:23

Yeah.

• 58:24

When you said car, bingo, why segment?

• 58:27

Oh, they're bingo, which is cute.

• 58:30

But yeah, these are looking awesome.

• 58:33

And these are achievable items.

• 58:35

Just very, very.

• 58:38

Yeah, I again, I apologize.

• 58:40

I just want to watch it on my phone because I don't have another screen here.

• 58:43

So I'm not I'm not distracted.

• 58:46

Yeah, he's he's not looking at his phone for other reasons.

• 58:49

He's watching the thing.

• 58:51

And then we've got some NPCs that have been created.

• 58:55

So this first one is an ambitious academic.

• 58:59

There's a couple different versions with the, you know, the petticoat vibes.

• 59:04

Yeah, these are pretty cool.

• 59:09

And I don't know if we want to tease a little bit about the academic aspect of it.

• 59:14

What for Carfin?

• 59:15

But oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 59:16

I mean, I think the you're talking about the story and yeah, yeah.

• 59:22

You know, you guys, those of you who probably tuned in during the live stream for Extra

• 59:26

Life last November, got a little bit of history and story around Carfin.

• 59:31

Carfin is a very large dungeon complex.

• 59:34

It's both an urban area at the base and then a huge mega dungeon with lots of different

• 59:40

levels.

• 59:41

I had a lot of fun in other games as inspiration with like those of you played Lineage 2 with

• 59:47

Tower of Insolence and the Krumah Tower I thought were really cool.

• 59:52

And if the story behind the tower at Carfin is that it is actually a part of the university

• 59:59

complex that was initially brought to the Aelahumans by the elves, the Pyrrhon elves.

• 1:00:10

And they kind of helped establish and taught the humans how to master the essence and how

• 1:00:15

to master magic.

• 1:00:17

And this was one of the great universities of the Aelah Empire.

• 1:00:19

So a lot of the experience and encounters there are going to be arcane in nature.

• 1:00:26

They're going to be representative of that essence magic and it's going to have some

• 1:00:32

powerful foes.

• 1:00:33

And also I was just told, thank you Jeremy for DMing me, that this is a dropped set.

• 1:00:38

So this is not a NPC outfit.

• 1:00:41

This is like a thing that you will achieve in game.

• 1:00:45

So apologies.

• 1:00:46

Sometimes I don't have all the context.

• 1:00:50

But yeah, this is the River Stalker, which I already saw y'all.

• 1:00:54

I'm showing it while Stephen was talking, but it's very, very cool.

• 1:00:59

And then I don't know if you want to say who this is.

• 1:01:02

I love that fur.

• 1:01:03

Yeah, I know the fur looks so good.

• 1:01:05

The fur looks so good.

• 1:01:06

Do the boots have, is it boots with the fur?

• 1:01:08

It is.

• 1:01:09

There are some boots with the fur.

• 1:01:12

We have a lot of boots with the fur.

• 1:01:14

I think people like boots with the fur.

• 1:01:19

This next one is, do we want to say who she is?

• 1:01:22

I have her name, but I didn't know if you wanted to share that yet.

• 1:01:25

Oh, that's a question.

• 1:01:28

There have been people who have been wondering who this lady is, but we haven't shared.

• 1:01:31

I think we saved that.

• 1:01:32

I don't know.

• 1:01:33

We saved the name?

• 1:01:34

Okay.

• 1:01:35

I think next month when we do the Tower of Carthend kind of walkthrough, we can expand

• 1:01:40

on that a bit.

• 1:01:41

Okay.

• 1:01:42

Are you talking, I don't know if I'm looking at the right thing.

• 1:01:43

I'm looking at a statue right now.

• 1:01:45

This is a different, this is not the person.

• 1:01:47

The other person we have talked about during the actual episode.

• 1:01:49

Right.

• 1:01:50

No, I'm not talking about the raid boss.

• 1:01:51

I'm talking about the influence of the previous deans of the college.

• 1:01:56

Yes.

• 1:01:57

Okay, cool.

• 1:01:58

I will not say her name then.

• 1:02:02

And then we've got Laria Lamon, which we have talked about before.

• 1:02:07

Yes, she was the primary protagonist become antagonist in the story from last November's

• 1:02:17

livestream with Extra Life, and now you can see her character model.

• 1:02:22

And she is a very powerful wizard who unfortunately in her desire to save as many as possible

• 1:02:33

went down a path that was unfortunately recoverable for her.

• 1:02:37

And I think we'll talk a little more about that also next month.

• 1:02:41

I feel like this is what you would hear from her, just like a little moaning.

• 1:02:49

Just a morning, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:02:53

And then we've got some concept art that we will show.

• 1:03:00

And the first one here-

• 1:03:01

Someone said, Pizza Drew said, I can fix her.

• 1:03:04

I just imagine players saying that as they're rushing to the top of the tower.

• 1:03:09

And then we've got the Aelin City.

• 1:03:12

You can see a little bit here.

• 1:03:14

Oh, yeah, you get to see a little bit of the grandiose nature of the starting city in the

• 1:03:23

Aelin Empire.

• 1:03:24

So this was the former capital of the Aelin Empire.

• 1:03:29

And this is where players are returning to if you choose that particular Divine Gateway.

• 1:03:35

It's huge.

• 1:03:36

The QA team is kind of running through it because we were trying to see the space and

• 1:03:42

it's just massive.

• 1:03:43

It is a massive area.

• 1:03:45

And again, the reason why it's so large and why this might be very atypical for us as

• 1:03:51

players to experience in such a starting area something so big is because this place changes

• 1:04:00

based on what you do in the world and different areas of this city become accessible as the

• 1:04:07

world develops further.

• 1:04:09

And there's reasons for you to come back at later levels and kind of experience that because

• 1:04:13

again, part of what makes I think the system design around these nodes and world building

• 1:04:20

so compelling from an MMORPG specific perspective is that many MMOs we play, we go through progression

• 1:04:27

and we leave areas and we never go back to those areas.

• 1:04:30

They become essentially content that gets lost.

• 1:04:36

And that's such a sad concept to have because a lot of time goes into making those areas

• 1:04:41

compelling and beautiful and something that's iconic in your experience within the game.

• 1:04:48

But the way that our world progresses and that our points of interest progress as well,

• 1:04:54

those areas are constantly being updated.

• 1:04:56

They're constantly changing and you're maintaining that traditional experience of character progression

• 1:05:02

and leveling for new players that are coming and joining later.

• 1:05:05

But now they're immersed in the social environment as well because the player population hasn't

• 1:05:10

moved past that area like we see in many other MMORPGs.

• 1:05:14

You have an opportunity to actually graduate into that social environment because this

• 1:05:19

area has opportunity for late game players to come back and explore and experience things.

• 1:05:25

The persistence in our world is a little bit different.

• 1:05:28

So what my experience as a new player is might be different from someone else's, especially

• 1:05:33

if we both start playing it at a different time frame, which is really cool.

• 1:05:38

And this is concept because I know some people were asking, this is concept, but we've already

• 1:05:43

seen the- Oh, our concepts to implementation are very

• 1:05:48

one to one.

• 1:05:49

If you've seen some of our other concepts and then our in game, they're pretty great

• 1:05:52

because our artists are just phenomenal.

• 1:05:54

But I've already seen some of this being gray boxed in the world.

• 1:05:58

Like I said, we were running around it.

• 1:05:59

It's massive.

• 1:06:00

And then there's also the starting, the Aelan portal area, which we've already started seeing

• 1:06:07

in game as well, the model of it.

• 1:06:09

And you can see the little people for the scale, how big this thing is.

• 1:06:13

It's huge.

• 1:06:14

And that is- Bad Earp here said, the Stargate.

• 1:06:22

It's a defined gateway.

• 1:06:23

There's a difference.

• 1:06:24

I love Stargate though.

• 1:06:25

I know.

• 1:06:26

I like Stargate too.

• 1:06:27

There's an RPG for Stargate, which I've gotten to play.

• 1:06:29

It's really fun.

• 1:06:30

Oh, that's cool.

• 1:06:32

But yes, no Stargate.

• 1:06:38

With that, we're going to head into our Q&A segment.

• 1:06:41

I'll have some images up in the background while we do Q&A.

• 1:06:46

Jaffa Creek.

• 1:06:48

I'm sorry.

• 1:06:50

Love it.

• 1:06:51

So good.

• 1:06:52

With that, we have our first question from Rufian.

• 1:06:54

They want to know about ranged weapons, which is, what will be the differences between a

• 1:07:00

crossbow and a regular bow?

• 1:07:02

And I think we've talked about short bow versus a long bow.

• 1:07:05

We don't have crossbows.

• 1:07:07

However, bows of different types will vary across many different stats between the damage

• 1:07:15

that's done, the damage window that's possible, the attack speed, stats that are associated

• 1:07:22

with those particular types of weapons.

• 1:07:25

And not only that, but very important is the weapon skill progression.

• 1:07:30

So each weapon group or weapon type has a associated skill progression where you can

• 1:07:37

unlock the ability to proc certain types of effects.

• 1:07:41

And they also have associated with them different combos that can be utilized.

• 1:07:46

Sorry.

• 1:07:47

And you know what?

• 1:07:48

The chat is right.

• 1:07:49

I got excited to get into the Q&A that I missed the studio update again.

• 1:07:54

Normally I'm like looking at the run of the show, but I just kind of got past it.

• 1:07:59

Yeah.

• 1:08:00

Do you have anything, any updates for us for the studio?

• 1:08:03

I know we talked a little bit about the fun stuff we were doing for February.

• 1:08:07

Yeah.

• 1:08:08

We talked a little bit about that.

• 1:08:10

We are now moving into what we have moved into as of last month and this month.

• 1:08:16

Another round of significant hiring.

• 1:08:19

You can see that on our intrepidstudios.com website.

• 1:08:23

It is of course important and just a side comment.

• 1:08:29

I'm sure many of you, as we are aware of the kind of turbulent times that the tech industry

• 1:08:36

is seeing right now with the layoffs from different studios and companies.

• 1:08:42

And that's always a hard thing to watch because the gaming industry is an industry of

• 1:08:49

passion and it is an industry of creatives who deserve an opportunity to excel in their

• 1:08:57

work and feel confident and secure in their position and the jobs that they have.

• 1:09:02

And it's a sad thing to see when those things kind of happen.

• 1:09:06

But at Intrepid Studios, we endeavor to be different.

• 1:09:10

I think we've done a great and sustainable way to kind of proceed with this game's development.

• 1:09:18

And I want to kind of shout out the fact that we have opportunities at the studio.

• 1:09:23

Yes, we are very selective and the recruitment process can be a bit difficult.

• 1:09:31

But I just want to say to those people out there who are affected, you can send your

• 1:09:37

applications into intrepidstudios.com.

• 1:09:39

Go on there, take a look at the jobs that are available.

• 1:09:42

If you don't see one that pertains to you necessarily, you can still provide your resume

• 1:09:48

and we will consider those.

• 1:09:50

So that hiring process is moving forward.

• 1:09:53

Additionally, we've had some-

• 1:09:55

On that front, I just want to mention that on the careers page, there is an uncategorized

• 1:09:59

section that says, don't see your position, you can still apply and apply through that

• 1:10:04

one right there.

• 1:10:06

Absolutely.

• 1:10:07

And then in addition to that, we've been changing up a little bit some of our production practices

• 1:10:13

over the course since the start of this new year.

• 1:10:16

We are now seeing in the month of February, the fruits of those changes, which are bountiful

• 1:10:22

and we are very happy with I think, some of these production changes that we've seen.

• 1:10:28

Jacob spearheading that charge has been doing a great job in that sense.

• 1:10:32

So studio update is very strong in February.

• 1:10:37

Very strong indeed.

• 1:10:38

Yeah, it's been pretty exciting for me too.

• 1:10:43

And moving back to the Q&A segment, I do want to ask a follow-up question in regards to

• 1:10:50

you, because you stated there aren't crossbows, but we have sold crossbow looking items.

• 1:10:55

Are those considered short bows?

• 1:10:57

Yes, those would be considered skins.

• 1:11:08

That's a good question.

• 1:11:09

Let me check into that actually, because I don't know specifically what you're in reference

• 1:11:12

to and I would want to make sure I'm giving an accurate answer.

• 1:11:16

So I will look into what that was.

• 1:11:19

It's likely that that would be a skin that's applied to a different weapon category.

• 1:11:23

That's not a crossbow category.

• 1:11:24

Okay.

• 1:11:25

I will make a note that Stephen will...

• 1:11:29

Yes, and then we'll post that answer on the forums or Cody will.

• 1:11:33

Yeah, that sounds great.

• 1:11:34

We can post that as a response in the live stream thread.

• 1:11:39

Is that a thing on the bingo card that Stephen got stumped on a question?

• 1:11:42

No, but I think derailing is on there.

• 1:11:45

Oh, okay.

• 1:11:46

Perfect.

• 1:11:47

Perfect.

• 1:11:48

Which you've done.

• 1:11:49

Did I ever tell you about the time that I fired a crossbow?

• 1:11:51

Like real IRL?

• 1:11:52

Yeah.

• 1:11:53

Yeah.

• 1:11:54

I've actually pulled.

• 1:11:55

They're actually very difficult to pull that straight back.

• 1:11:57

Bows in general are hard to pull back if you've ever-

• 1:11:59

Oh, one time I was like my initial thing in archery, I think I pulled it back and I shot

• 1:12:04

the arrow up and it went over the shooting range and I could have sworn I heard somebody

• 1:12:10

scream, but-

• 1:12:11

Stephen!

• 1:12:12

Yeah, that was a...

• 1:12:13

I'm just kidding.

• 1:12:15

I was trying to derail so whoever had that bingo card could get it.

• 1:12:19

Oh, okay.

• 1:12:20

I got you.

• 1:12:21

I was just like...

• 1:12:22

Oh my God, it's scaring me.

• 1:12:26

Digital Daydream wants to know about player corruption.

• 1:12:28

Are corrupted players able to enter a freehold's boundaries or access its content?

• 1:12:34

And if so, what's stopping freeholds from being corrupted players' safe havens?

• 1:12:38

I actually kind of love this idea where you're on the run and you're like, can I stay in

• 1:12:43

your house?

• 1:12:46

So corrupted players can access their freeholds.

• 1:12:49

Can they access other people's freeholds?

• 1:12:52

Well freeholds are in the open world so you can move into those freeholds.

• 1:12:55

The protection area is in the house, but what corrupted players can't do is they cannot

• 1:13:01

interface with storage nor can they interface with player trading either while corrupt.

• 1:13:08

So if they had storage items that were on their freehold, they wouldn't have the opportunity

• 1:13:13

to deposit or withdraw.

• 1:13:15

All right.

• 1:13:16

Hopefully that answers the question there.

• 1:13:18

And then we have Epelove who wants to know about class specific actions.

• 1:13:23

What kind and how many special or unique activities can we expect classes to perform outside of

• 1:13:30

combat such as rogues opening locks, tracking enemies as a ranger, or removing corruption

• 1:13:37

from the ground as a cleric?

• 1:13:39

Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:13:41

So that's funny that this question exists because just 30 minutes ago I was talking

• 1:13:47

about those utility abilities like finding tracks or cleansing poisons, arcane eye to

• 1:13:53

reveal secret passages.

• 1:13:56

The idea is how do we blend the traditional tabletop RPG role of utility and or skill

• 1:14:03

checks into the setting of a graphical MMORPG?

• 1:14:10

And I think that it's both a compliment of the skill kit that's available and how it

• 1:14:17

interacts with the world for those curated or special designs within these locations.

• 1:14:23

So to answer that question, that is intended.

• 1:14:27

We've shown a little bit of that in the past and it is something that we want to make feel

• 1:14:31

compelling and rewarding and viable as a use case scenario in many different settings that

• 1:14:37

you might find yourself in within the world.

• 1:14:40

And not a question that's on here, but I will add it as a bonus one because the range weapon

• 1:14:45

one didn't get answered.

• 1:14:47

But we are moving to 5.1.

• 1:14:49

I know a lot of people were asking about that.

• 1:14:51

We're constantly keeping an eye on the latest.

• 1:14:56

Actually that's been a big endeavor over the course of the last, I would say about six

• 1:15:00

weeks.

• 1:15:02

And just to give you guys a bit of context if you're unfamiliar with the game development

• 1:15:08

process, engine upgrades can be a very taxing process.

• 1:15:14

It especially becomes so given how many custom changes that a project makes to the engine,

• 1:15:20

making those merges over can be kind of a bit of a headache.

• 1:15:25

And we have a great team.

• 1:15:26

Our networking team has been doing a great job, Zach, has been spearheading that process

• 1:15:31

for the network changes along with Mitch.

• 1:15:34

And it took a little bit longer for us to make that move over because we initially started

• 1:15:39

moving over to 5.1 and then the 5.1.1 update dropped with a lot of great additions from

• 1:15:45

Epic and we decided to bite the bullet and just take it a step further to 0.1.1.

• 1:15:51

So I think that actually, Margaret, you would know this, that QA has their hands on that

• 1:15:57

now.

• 1:15:58

Yes, today.

• 1:15:59

So last night we did our build lock, like Steven said, for the last six weeks we've

• 1:16:03

been working towards this.

• 1:16:04

The next sprint for that team is going to be focusing on bug fixing.

• 1:16:09

So yesterday we locked the build.

• 1:16:12

We got a good dev build that we wanted to use as our basis and then we will be merging

• 1:16:16

that all up to our dev engine.

• 1:16:19

And hopefully everything will go well and we'll be able to move things.

• 1:16:22

We're locked today and then we should be unlocking again on Monday so people can check things

• 1:16:27

in.

• 1:16:28

I know designers are like, why?

• 1:16:31

Just bear with us one day, guys.

• 1:16:33

And we're doing a lot of testing.

• 1:16:35

We'll probably have a few bugs throughout the first couple of weeks, but we'll work

• 1:16:38

out those results.

• 1:16:39

And just so you guys know that what Margaret's referring to when she says check-ins and locking,

• 1:16:45

essentially our source control method, utilizing Perforce, is how developers make things and

• 1:16:52

they submit those things into Perforce.

• 1:16:55

And right now locking that down means that we're not allowing any additional changes

• 1:16:59

so that we can solidify that 0.1.1 update.

• 1:17:03

Otherwise you're merging into stuff that's not exactly the same and it can cause other

• 1:17:07

issues.

• 1:17:08

So we just want to make sure that we're...

• 1:17:10

We know what the basis is and then as we merge in, we'll be okay.

• 1:17:14

But yeah, the testing, I haven't looked at what the test results have been for that full

• 1:17:19

regression test yet.

• 1:17:20

I'll probably see that by the end of today.

• 1:17:23

And then if everything goes well, Monday we should be rocking and rolling and we'll just

• 1:17:27

be doing a lot of bug fixing for the next couple of weeks.

• 1:17:29

I know a lot of artists that are very excited to get their hands on the 0.1.1 update.

• 1:17:34

Yes.

• 1:17:35

I think all the departments were getting...

• 1:17:37

There were things that were blocking them.

• 1:17:39

I think TechArt was literally knocking down the doors like, what do I got to do?

• 1:17:45

We had our Intrepid Net stuff and things.

• 1:17:47

So there was just a lot of things that we were trying to resolve before we pushed that

• 1:17:51

up.

• 1:17:52

So we're good now.

• 1:17:53

We're moving up and we know there's going to be some bugs.

• 1:17:54

That's a little bit of a studio update by the way.

• 1:17:56

Yeah, there you go.

• 1:17:57

That should have been part of the studio update.

• 1:17:59

There's a lot going on all the time.

• 1:18:00

So we're constantly working towards things, homies.

• 1:18:06

But go back to the Q&A here.

• 1:18:08

We do have a question from Ruchis who wants to know about racial abilities.

• 1:18:13

Will any of your race or class choices affect your artisan skills?

• 1:18:20

That is something that is still up in the air a little bit.

• 1:18:23

We haven't touched too heavily on the racial ability side of things.

• 1:18:28

It is entirely possible that it might...

• 1:18:31

The concern there though would be that we want equitability across race types with at

• 1:18:36

least the benefits that...

• 1:18:38

Not the benefit types, but at least that you're having some benefits so that when we talk

• 1:18:43

about a crafter being pigeonholed into a specific type of race that might not align with what

• 1:18:48

they want to do elsewhere, they aren't forced to do that because of a specific racial ability

• 1:18:54

that only that race has access to.

• 1:18:56

So one thing we've talked about in the past is replacing the racial abilities with more

• 1:19:03

of a background style where you get to select your background regardless of race.

• 1:19:09

And so those two aren't tied intrinsically, but instead it's like, I'm an orphan who was

• 1:19:14

raised in the temple, therefore I have this racial trait, right?

• 1:19:18

I'm an urchin.

• 1:19:20

Right, exactly.

• 1:19:21

I think that's probably the direction that we're going to go in.

• 1:19:26

But yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

• 1:19:29

Perfect.

• 1:19:30

And then we've got Halcyon Days who wants to know about the threat meters.

• 1:19:36

Will there be a threat meter of any kind such as a tank only ability or aura within a certain

• 1:19:42

range?

• 1:19:43

Well, I know that this is a highly contentious topic.

• 1:19:47

There's DPS meter, tank meter.

• 1:19:50

I know.

• 1:19:51

I'm going to give you my-

• 1:19:52

They like meters, Steven.

• 1:19:53

I'm going to give you my subjective perspective here is that meters, in my opinion, are a

• 1:20:01

removal from the game immersion.

• 1:20:08

And what I mean by that isn't necessarily even the fact that having the meter kind of

• 1:20:13

takes you out of the game per se, but there's a lot of diegetic kind of approach that you

• 1:20:18

can take that doesn't rely on UI elements like a meter to kind of indicate how you should

• 1:20:22

do a thing.

• 1:20:24

And when you're not utilizing those types of meters, you can do different types of strategies

• 1:20:29

and encounter design, right?

• 1:20:31

You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away

• 1:20:35

by a meter indicating something.

• 1:20:38

And that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize.

• 1:20:44

And for that reason, we're not going to be including threat meters.

• 1:20:49

What we will be including, however, are animation indicators.

• 1:20:53

We're going to be including ability indicators to kind of show the tank like, hey, I might

• 1:21:01

be losing aggro here.

• 1:21:03

Like I am observing in the world these immersive elements that are not tied to any specific

• 1:21:08

type of UI, but indicate to me that this monster might be moving off to attack somebody else

• 1:21:13

in a very immediate future.

• 1:21:15

And now I should be using the abilities that I'm saving to kind of regain that aggro or

• 1:21:19

to lock them down with a taunt or something, right?

• 1:21:22

That to me is a bit more representative of the type of gameplay we want to bring in our

• 1:21:29

encounter design.

• 1:21:30

And for that reason, that's why we're not including threat meters.

• 1:21:35

Now that's different than a DPS meter, right?

• 1:21:37

The DPS meter to me was more about kind of what role DPS meters provide in online communities

• 1:21:43

that I've noticed in the past, my experiences.

• 1:21:46

They can be a bit toxic.

• 1:21:47

They can be a bit exclusive, exclusionary, excuse me.

• 1:21:52

And that's why we don't want the DPS meters.

• 1:21:54

The threat meters says we want to indicate threat.

• 1:21:57

We want to tell you, hey, you might be losing threat.

• 1:22:00

We just don't want to do that through a meter.

• 1:22:03

All right.

• 1:22:04

And our next question is from Armored Cell.

• 1:22:07

And it's about making friends.

• 1:22:09

Will all creatures be hostile?

• 1:22:11

And if not, could I, for example, give gifts to goblins to try and make them more friendly

• 1:22:16

to me?

• 1:22:18

Not all creatures will be hostile.

• 1:22:21

I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past when talking about like taming

• 1:22:26

and or certain types of like creature gatherable resources.

• 1:22:31

There are herds that exist out there.

• 1:22:33

There are big game that exist out there where they're not going to aggro and attack you

• 1:22:38

per se.

• 1:22:40

Also lower level monsters and certain type of like social monsters may not attack you

• 1:22:45

off the bat.

• 1:22:46

So not every creature is aggro.

• 1:22:49

We toyed with the idea early on of having kind of faction based reputation that could

• 1:22:55

change that dynamic between you and certain NPC factions.

• 1:23:00

While that exists in the non monster NPCs that live within nodes in our merchant guilds

• 1:23:07

or whatever, we haven't extended that out to the monster population.

• 1:23:12

And I don't know that we will in the first iteration or the first in the initial launch

• 1:23:17

for Ashes of Creation.

• 1:23:18

That might be something that we delegate to a future patch.

• 1:23:21

I'm not opposed to the idea.

• 1:23:22

I think it's a cool idea.

• 1:23:23

I think it's interesting.

• 1:23:24

I think it can be compelling and it plays into player agency.

• 1:23:27

But yeah, not for the first go around.

• 1:23:32

It's an endeavor.

• 1:23:33

And then Drunk Ninja wants to know about tanks and boats.

• 1:23:36

How will tanks hold threat on monsters while on a boat?

• 1:23:42

That's a good question.

• 1:23:44

So there's a few ways that you can do that.

• 1:23:49

One is boats have attachments that live on them.

• 1:23:54

Those could be potion launchers.

• 1:23:57

They could be other types of damage dealing attachments.

• 1:24:02

And users who are on the boat and utilizing those types of attachments will have the damage

• 1:24:08

assigned as a threat essentially as hate to them.

• 1:24:12

So if I'm shooting the potion launcher and I shoot a target, the damage I do gets assigned

• 1:24:16

to me as threat essentially.

• 1:24:19

But in addition-

• 1:24:20

Don't get them excited about potion launchers again.

• 1:24:22

I know.

• 1:24:23

I know.

• 1:24:24

Well, I love potion launchers.

• 1:24:25

Sorry.

• 1:24:26

I mean, you might have unique ammunition that can be used which amplify that threat.

• 1:24:31

But that doesn't discount the fact that your skill sets can still be used on boats and

• 1:24:36

or in water.

• 1:24:37

So as a tank, I'll have ranges on my taunts and on my hate generation abilities.

• 1:24:47

And I'm going to be expected to use those rotations in a nautical setting or on land.

• 1:24:52

So I think that that's acceptable.

• 1:24:56

And outside of that, I would say it's going to be relatively normal mechanics when it

• 1:25:00

comes to threat generation and utilizing your skill sets and rotations.

• 1:25:05

Right.

• 1:25:06

And then we've got a question here from Nick about detargeting.

• 1:25:11

Will there be detargeting abilities in Ashes of Creation?

• 1:25:14

Yes, there will be detargeting abilities in Ashes of Creation.

• 1:25:19

I think that one of the main applications for the ability to kind of detarget, excuse

• 1:25:26

me, in my opinion, there's two types of detargeting.

• 1:25:30

There's the ability to remove hate or aggro from myself, which might transit an enemy

• 1:25:38

target or pacify them.

• 1:25:42

But then in addition, if we think about PvP settings and the role of taunt or hate, a

• 1:25:50

lot of times for tanks in the MMOs that I've played, where you have a PvE and PvP scenario,

• 1:26:00

those types of hate generation abilities don't really have cross application into the PvP

• 1:26:03

realm.

• 1:26:04

And that can feel kind of bad because typically a tank build out can be delegated around how

• 1:26:11

I generate hate.

• 1:26:13

And if it has no cross application into PvP, then effectively you're creating a class composition

• 1:26:17

that just is not relevant in half of the game or in that area of the game.

• 1:26:23

So when we talk about how we're going to apply hate to player targets or taunt to player

• 1:26:29

targets, sometimes that can move into the realm of target switching or the ability to

• 1:26:35

demand that target on the tank in a PvP scenario as well.

• 1:26:40

It's something that we need to get player feedback on because there's a lot of strong

• 1:26:44

emotions around that type of mechanic.

• 1:26:47

I for one am a big proponent of that.

• 1:26:50

I think it's interesting.

• 1:26:51

I think that it plays into the role of the tank and that it hits a class fantasy that

• 1:26:57

most tank players want to feel.

• 1:27:00

And I think, however, on the flip side of that, it is a source of control.

• 1:27:04

And anytime you're under the effects of some source of control, it's going to be a feel

• 1:27:07

bad moment for the target that's being controlled.

• 1:27:10

So that's why I think it generates a lot of feelings on both sides of the aisle there.

• 1:27:15

But yeah, you should guys should opine on that.

• 1:27:17

Give us your thoughts, how you feel about those types of mechanics.

• 1:27:21

All right.

• 1:27:22

And then we've got a question about the summoner from The Pepper.

• 1:27:27

How will the summoner interact with threat management?

• 1:27:30

For example, would each summon have their own threat level?

• 1:27:34

Yeah.

• 1:27:36

So that's a very good question.

• 1:27:37

So summons exist within a kind of mini trinity in the sense that I can summon certain types

• 1:27:47

of pets that excel either as DPS, as support, or as a tank, essentially.

• 1:27:53

And the ones that serve the role of the tank, they will have their own taunt and hate generation

• 1:27:58

ability rotations as well.

• 1:28:00

That's the role of the summoner.

• 1:28:02

That's what's fun about a summoner in my opinion.

• 1:28:04

But in addition to that, there will be other mechanisms that are available for the summoner

• 1:28:09

themselves that don't live on the pet.

• 1:28:12

Some of those things might be the ability to transfer pain, which is essentially if

• 1:28:16

the summoner takes damage, then the summon takes a portion of that damage.

• 1:28:21

The same might be true for hate.

• 1:28:23

If the summoner takes hate, they can transfer a portion of that hate over to the summon

• 1:28:27

as well.

• 1:28:28

And then in addition to that, shit, I lost my train of thought.

• 1:28:35

Excuse me.

• 1:28:36

Shoot.

• 1:28:37

I lost my train of thought.

• 1:28:38

I don't know where I was going with that one.

• 1:28:41

It was a long night last night.

• 1:28:42

I think I went to bed at about 4 a.m.

• 1:28:44

Oh, my gosh.

• 1:28:45

I know.

• 1:28:46

Some people were saying you look kind of tired and that makes sense.

• 1:28:49

I'm sorry.

• 1:28:50

So I don't come to Vegas too often.

• 1:28:54

I came and I do like to play poker.

• 1:28:57

And I was playing poker.

• 1:28:58

My last meeting ended last night at like 1130 and I was walking past the poker room and

• 1:29:03

I was like, oh, there's like some poker games.

• 1:29:05

I'm going to go try poker.

• 1:29:06

And I ended up staying there till like four in the morning.

• 1:29:08

I like craps.

• 1:29:09

Oh, really?

• 1:29:10

Yeah.

• 1:29:11

Sorry to dice this, but it gets a little hectic sometimes at those tables.

• 1:29:14

Sorry.

• 1:29:15

Anyways, where I was going with the summoner.

• 1:29:17

Summoner.

• 1:29:18

There's different depending on the type of some pet.

• 1:29:21

Yeah, depending on the type of summon, you'll have access to those types of abilities.

• 1:29:24

So yes, that is intended as a mechanic for the summons.

• 1:29:27

Okay.

• 1:29:28

Hopefully that answered your question.

• 1:29:31

Basically I think the main thing was which each summon have their own threat level versus

• 1:29:36

like me as a summoner having like no, the the summon will have its own hate.

• 1:29:42

Yeah.

• 1:29:43

There you go.

• 1:29:44

Yeah, that's the answer.

• 1:29:45

And as I was wondering about death in war.

• 1:29:47

And by the way, that's not just for summons.

• 1:29:50

That's also for combat pets as well, which are agnostic class that those those are considered

• 1:29:57

its own entity on the hate list.

• 1:30:00

And this question is, are the death penalties for losing to guild war opponents in PvP equivalent

• 1:30:06

to the combatant ones or the non combatant ones or something else altogether?

• 1:30:10

No.

• 1:30:11

And I think this stems from because in sieges we stated that you wouldn't drop things the

• 1:30:16

same way and death penalties wouldn't be the same as in the open world.

• 1:30:20

Correct.

• 1:30:21

Yeah, that's correct.

• 1:30:22

And we have to think about those penalties applied in two different realms.

• 1:30:29

In a sanctioned event sanctioned, meaning that this is something you have the option

• 1:30:35

to opt out of.

• 1:30:37

That's a castle siege.

• 1:30:38

That's a node siege.

• 1:30:39

That's a caravan.

• 1:30:40

That's a guild war.

• 1:30:41

That's a node war.

• 1:30:42

Like you can drop your citizenship.

• 1:30:44

You can drop your guild tag.

• 1:30:45

You can drop participating in one of those things.

• 1:30:48

In any of those types of opt in and opt out events, the death penalties do not exist.

• 1:30:54

These are sanctioned.

• 1:30:55

They're intended to allow people to engage in PvP.

• 1:31:01

Now if I die to an NPC while I'm out hunting or if I die to another player through the

• 1:31:07

flagging system, those are where death penalties come into play.

• 1:31:14

And that's where dead experience can be earned.

• 1:31:16

And that's where corruption can be had.

• 1:31:20

So it's important to kind of separate those two realms.

• 1:31:23

All right.

• 1:31:24

And that is our final question.

• 1:31:27

We are going to wrap things up, but stay around for the end video.

• 1:31:32

Got a little-

• 1:31:33

Are we going to sign off with the teaser?

• 1:31:35

Yeah, sign off with the teaser.

• 1:31:36

Ooh, okay, cool.

• 1:31:37

I think that's fun.

• 1:31:38

What do you think?

• 1:31:39

Yeah, I think so too.

• 1:31:40

I think it's fun.

• 1:31:41

Everybody in chat is like, teaser now!

• 1:31:42

Teaser, get me the teaser.

• 1:31:43

All right.

• 1:31:44

With that, we just want to remind you to check out over on our forums, forums.AshesOfCreation.com.

• 1:31:52

We'd love for your feedback, especially on the UI stuff that you saw today.

• 1:31:56

We will have our Songs of the Goddess cosmetic swapping over on March 8th.

• 1:32:01

We also have a really cool calendar if you want to check that out over on AshesOfCreation.com

• 1:32:06

slash news.

• 1:32:08

You can download it and you can have a full year calendar for yourself with some really

• 1:32:11

cool Ashes of Creation art.

• 1:32:14

Very lovely art, I would say.

• 1:32:16

And of course, we want to say thank you to all of you for tuning in and watching.

• 1:32:19

We really appreciate your support and your continued support following along with our

• 1:32:23

journey through development.

• 1:32:25

We know not a lot of companies do this, so sharing our development progress is definitely

• 1:32:31

a long-term journey.

• 1:32:33

Making games is not an easy feat as much as people think it may be, and we will launch

• 1:32:37

when we are ready.

• 1:32:39

We assure you that our focus is making a great quality game, and we hope that you will have

• 1:32:43

fun whenever we are able to get your hands on it in Alpha 2.

• 1:32:47

And we also want to say thank you to Colby for joining us and sharing all the good UI

• 1:32:51

stuff and his lovely team.

• 1:32:53

And of course, Steven, thank you for your time.

• 1:32:55

I know you're very busy, but we appreciate it.

• 1:32:58

We hope that you all stay safe and healthy.

• 1:33:00

The VOD will be up on Twitch right away after we are done here, and then we'll also upload

• 1:33:04

it to our YouTube channel.

• 1:33:06

And if you leave us a comment on our next development update and you subscribe to our

• 1:33:11

channel, you may be spotlighted as one of our winners to be spotlighted in our next

• 1:33:15

dev update next month.

• 1:33:16

And of course, follow us in all the places, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all

• 1:33:20

the places, we're everywhere.

• 1:33:21

We constantly are posting almost every day for you guys, so we hope that you enjoy that.

• 1:33:26

And with that, we hope you enjoy a little teaser of what's to come in our next stream.

• 1:33:33

Bye guys, enjoy.