Talk:2023-03-31 Livestream

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Intro

• 00:00

Hello everybody and Steven's stomach. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. What were

• 00:23

you doing? I was trying to find the, I was trying to find the Twitch channels so I could

• 00:29

watch chat. Oh yeah, you gotta have chat up. I have all the chats. Internal, Discord, all

• 00:36

the social. Yes. Twitch. And by the way. I try my best. Before we even begin, I just

• 00:41

want to, just want to touch on the fact that I am coming to you from home. I unfortunately

• 00:51

got under the weather the other day. He's a little sick. Yes, and last night. You look

• 00:57

so cozy though. Well, let me say I don't feel cozy. But you look cozy. Very, very comfortable.

• 01:05

Well, welcome everybody. Salutations and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation March development

• 01:10

update. We hope that you are well and safe. Hopefully you are not sick like Steven is.

• 01:15

But we are still here. We're still gonna give you guys a great monthly update. For those

• 01:21

of you who, you know, maybe don't follow us very closely, you might not see all the little

• 01:24

things that we're doing all the time, but this is your little update for what we've

• 01:27

been working on. So just to remind you of what we're covering today, we'll be going

• 01:32

over some quick reminders. We have a little announcement. We'll be showing our carfen

• 01:37

preview which you got a little teaser of last month. And then we also have some character

• 01:44

art and some additional art update as well. And then studio update and Q&A. So we hope

• 01:50

that y'all are doing well. I'm excited. We just wrapped up one of our milestones, milestone

• 01:58

four for us internally. And for those of you who don't know, we kind of different sprints

• 02:02

that we run. And this was a big one for us. So it's very exciting. And we're excited to

• 02:07

start heading into our milestone five. I want to capture the little phoenixes. You got a

• 02:14

little phoenix on each side. I know. I put a little phoenix up on each of the sides.

• 02:20

Yeah, we had a, for these of you guys who don't know, so we follow an agile development

• 02:27

process where we operate under sprints and milestones and whatnot. And the end of our

• 02:31

milestone four was last week. And we tend to as a studio, obviously celebrate these

• 02:40

milestones that we hit. And last night, Margaret organized a very awesome evening at this really

• 02:50

cool bowling alley, brewery slash arcade. And it was really cool. The team just had

• 02:59

an opportunity to relax and get to enjoy each other's company in a non-professional setting.

• 03:08

And I thought that was cool. It was so cute. People hugging each other and just having

• 03:13

a good time and chatting about work. And not work, having fun chatting about work, not

• 03:19

stressful work. So I also just want to, before we get into things, I want to say, last night

• 03:25

I hadn't bowled in years, probably. And I guess age is really catching up with me. And

• 03:34

so I had this bowling ball and I was taking the first bowling swing of the night for myself.

• 03:42

And I go up there and I have the bowling ball in the hands and I'm about to throw it down

• 03:48

the thing. And my two fingers came out of the bowling ball just fine. But my thumb got

• 03:58

stuck as I was about to throw the ball. And I knew immediately what was going to happen.

• 04:05

And this was definitely, my face started to go from excited and happy to sheer terror.

• 04:12

And the ball just keeps going up into the air, stuck to my hand. And then finally at

• 04:17

the last possible second, when it's like at the highest point of the arc, the ball flies

• 04:22

off my hand straight up into the air onto the other bowling lane and lands with this

• 04:27

massive thud that the entire bowling alley was silent and all looking over at me. Like

• 04:35

what was happening? I was so embarrassed. That was so bad.

• 04:39

I won't name names, but one of our other developers, I don't know if he'll want me to share his

• 04:45

name. He can DM me if he's okay with it. They decided that their last round, they were going

• 04:51

to get the biggest, heaviest ball and throw it down the lane.

• 04:54

Oh no.

• 04:55

And similarly to you, also had a problem, but instead threw the ball backwards at the

• 05:04

people instead of down the lane.

• 05:06

Let's just say we need to stick to making games and not bowling. But regardless, we

• 05:14

had a really fun night. It was awesome. It's always great to be able to spend time with

• 05:18

each other and celebrate our successes. And I feel like that's what makes Ashes and Intrepid

• 05:25

a really great place to work is that we're all passionate. We love MMOs. We love what

• 05:30

we're doing. We love what we're building, but also we love doing it together. And that's

• 05:35

a super, super cool experience to have, I think, from a workplace environment standpoint.

• 05:39

Not a lot of companies foster that type of atmosphere. And I think we've done a really

• 05:43

good job at that.

• 05:44

Yeah. And maybe in the studio update segment, we'll talk a little bit about what was done

• 05:49

in Milestone 4 and what we're moving towards. But let's start with some of our things that

• 05:56

we just need to get out of the way right now, which is, first and foremost, we do have our

Reminders

• 05:59

YouTube subscriber comment. If you don't know, if you subscribe to us over on YouTube and

• 06:05

you comment as a subscriber on our development update video, you could be chosen to be spotlighted.

• 06:13

And today's spotlight, I will switch over to that scene, is from Papa Smurf 6834. And

• 06:20

their question is, are we months away from the Alpha 2 or years plural? Any kind of indication

• 06:27

of the timetable would be greatly appreciated. And I think from my team, they would also

• 06:31

love for us to set that expectation because they deal with this question all the time

• 06:36

and so I'm kind of throwing it to you, Stephen.

• 06:39

Absolutely. So, you know, this is a common question desiring minds wish to know. We are

• 06:47

not years away from Alpha 2. But also, Alpha 2 is not right around the corner. You know,

• 06:55

as a public project, as a project that is visible from the outside during its development,

• 07:03

it's important that we execute well during these testing phases. And early on in the

• 07:10

project, you know, we made, I made some missteps in when we were anticipating coming to certain

• 07:19

testing periods. You know, obviously, I have learned a considerable amount over what it

• 07:24

takes to build these games over the last six years. And we made a promise to the community

• 07:30

that we would not give dates again in the future unless we were very certain that we

• 07:35

were going to hit those dates or at least be very close to hitting them. And so, you

• 07:39

know, as a result of that, we have our internal schedule, we have our internal milestones,

• 07:45

you know, we have our production roadmap that we operate from and the teams operate very

• 07:51

well from these expectations internally as well. But to answer that question, no, we're

• 07:56

not years away from Alpha 2. Internally, you know, we're going to be doing some testing

• 08:04

probably late this year and early next year as it relates to Alpha 2. And Alpha 2 is going

• 08:11

to be, you know, kind of a slow roll out of testing. So our desire is to get in as quickly

• 08:20

as possible, test some of the core systems and loops that we've integrated, you know,

• 08:26

since our Alpha 1 and get those vetted by player feedback and experience that we can

• 08:35

iterate upon essentially and get an opportunity. And that's going to be all public, right?

• 08:40

You guys know that Alpha 2 is a non-NDA environment testing. But prior to Alpha 2, we will test

• 08:48

some more spot oriented testing with some of the Alpha 1 testers and or PI leading up

• 08:55

to what would eventually become the Alpha 2 launch.

• 08:58

We'll probably start with PI so that we have a smaller group and then we'll add on to it

• 09:03

with our spot testing with Alpha 1 users. And then as we're ready, we'll bring in Alpha

• 09:08

2 users and then, you know, then we'll go more public with the big stuff.

• 09:13

Yeah. And, you know, I think all of us have experienced, so all of us have experienced

• 09:19

launches of games or testing platforms that we felt needed more time from a consumer,

• 09:27

from a player's perspective. And, you know, our approach, our philosophy is that essentially

• 09:35

the game will be ready when it's ready. We're not striving for perfection. We're striving

• 09:41

to achieve what the core loop is anticipated to be, what we've promised, what we're building

• 09:47

right now. That is the goal. And we understand just how important it is to succeed during

• 09:55

these testing periods and obviously for launch because MMOs traditionally really only get

• 10:01

one stab at that launch. And they can, you know, work to improve the game after launch

• 10:06

if there's hiccups and whatnot that we've experienced obviously. But really we want

• 10:10

to execute well on that initial launch. And what that means for us is we have to spend

• 10:15

that time to ensure that what we are building is sustainable, is extensible, is performant,

• 10:24

and represents what the core philosophy of gameplay loops are intending to be. And we're

• 10:29

building a massive project. I mean, this is probably the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG

• 10:36

to date at a launch frame, right? Obviously other products, other franchises have had

• 10:42

a decade plus to introduce and trickle out content. And one of the difficulties of launching

• 10:48

an MMO, a new MMO, is that you have to compete or try to compete and contend with all of

• 10:55

that content that's available because it creates a really strong social elasticity for the

• 10:59

players of those MMOs. And we want to be ensuring that our core gameplay loops are enjoyable,

• 11:11

are fulfilling, and have content that keeps players invested for a long time to come.

• 11:17

And because that's our goal and we have a lot of those systems to build, the team is

• 11:22

hard at work creating them in preparation for Alpha 2, which is probably going to be,

• 11:27

I mean, it is going to be one of our biggest test environments up until launch is Alpha

• 11:34

2. I mean, that is a major slice of the game.

• 11:37

I mean, like Stephen said, we only get one chance for first impressions. So it's very

• 11:43

important for us. If Alpha 1 hadn't had gone as well as it did, people might not be as

• 11:49

excited for Alpha 2. So thinking about the future of that and the longevity of our project

• 11:54

and making sure that people are going to love what we're creating as much as possible. And

• 11:59

as we've said many times, we're constantly going to take feedback. And there are decisions

• 12:04

that we've made on the design front that we want to come to fruition. And we know that

• 12:08

sometimes it's not what you guys are always interested in, but we were like, give us a

• 12:12

chance, play it, give us feedback, and we will alter things as we go forward. But I

• 12:16

think we're really excited, just as excited for you guys to join us and see what we're

• 12:22

creating. I mean, from a developer's perspective, there's nothing greater than seeing someone

• 12:27

enjoy the product that you've created. And I mean, obviously, we all want to enjoy it

• 12:32

too. I think that we've had some a lot of fun internally, which we might be sharing

• 12:37

some of that internal fun with you guys next month. But we've definitely, you know, trying

• 12:47

to make sure that we're creating something. And I think one of the things that people

• 12:52

might not realize is that MMOs take a really long time to make. That's why we're like,

• 12:57

this is a journey that you're going on with us. You're getting to see what development

• 13:01

is like. And I think that was the get go. Yeah, from the get go. And what's gonna be

• 13:05

fun is you're gonna get to see that journey. And then when we look back on this at launch,

• 13:09

we're gonna be like, wow, it's crazy seeing how, you know, even now looking at what was

• 13:15

the beginning of Ashes of Creation and what is now is crazy. The cool thing is that journey

• 13:22

is likely going to be expressed as even part of a documentary when we're done with this

• 13:26

thing, right? We record all of our meetings, all of our sessions, everything is kept on

• 13:31

a record. So when we're done launching this product, we have an opportunity to really

• 13:37

give an under the hood look at what the Herculean effort it's taken to get to where we are today

• 13:44

and where we will eventually be soon enough. So I want to bring up on that front is, you

• 13:48

know, the feedback that you guys give us. Roshan and Vaknar are amazing. They put together

• 13:53

these phenomenal reports. We record those meetings that we have with the designers and

• 13:58

developers when we go over that feedback. And it's really, I can't wait for you guys

• 14:03

to see like that side of it where you get to see like, hey, we really were taking in

• 14:07

your feedback. And most of the time in those meetings, it's like, yeah, we're already planning

• 14:10

on doing that and that and that. And some of the extra ideas we're like, oh, that's

• 14:14

cool. It's validation. Yeah, it's validating like what we're saying. And the issues that

• 14:18

you had and concerns that you guys have are also the issues and concerns we have. So it's

• 14:22

making sure that we're all on the same page. But I think it'll be cool for you to experience

• 14:25

that and see the other side of it. But obviously, we have to, you know, be careful what we share

• 14:32

prior to launch just because, like we said, we only have one chance to opportunity to

• 14:38

make an impression. Absolutely. Yeah. And just a last point on that topic. And then

• 14:43

I think we can move on. Yeah, we got to move on. Yeah, we got a whole show for you guys.

• 14:48

Exactly. Is that this journey is not for everyone. The patience it requires, the understanding,

• 14:56

the vision in looking and seeing where something is at now and where it will be in the future.

• 15:04

That is a very specific type of individual and requires unique patience, I think. You

• 15:13

know, our development, like every development, is never going to be perfect. And we're going

• 15:17

to have, you know, areas that slip and areas where we can improve. And hopefully, you know,

• 15:24

those of you who have watched for a very long time now, our development progress, you will

• 15:30

have seen those improvements from, you know, day one to today and to tomorrow. And it's

• 15:37

okay if following development is not for you. At some point. Turn it off. Go play other

• 15:44

games and come back when you're ready to play. And at some point, there is going to be an

• 15:49

opportunity now to just download the game and play. And that is going to be the experience

• 15:55

in and of itself. So. 100%. And with that, we're going to do a little announcement. Next

• 16:04

month, you're going to get two live streams. So on April 7th at 11am Pacific, our normal

• 16:11

time but just a little earlier, so literally next Friday, we will be doing a Creative Director

• 16:16

Community Q&A that will be with a few content creators. Chibi Bree from the Golden Feather

• 16:21

will be joining us. RichieSH, if you've watched any of their YouTube videos. And of course,

• 16:26

the Merg from Ashes Pathfinders. And we're really excited. They've accumulated some amazing

• 16:33

questions from their communities and from the community as a whole. We really wanted

• 16:37

to kind of give some love to the people who have been really supporting us and being part

• 16:42

of the community for so long. And we hope that you guys enjoy it. They got some good

• 16:46

questions. Stephen hasn't read them yet. No. Maybe we'll add some spicy ones in there.

• 16:52

I don't typically read questions prior. He doesn't like to. And my team's like, why won't

• 16:57

he read them? I was like, he doesn't want to. I don't want to overthink the response.

• 17:02

So I typically just, I want to answer off the cuff as much as I can. But I'm excited

• 17:09

about that. That's going to be a fun, I think, conversation to have.

• 17:12

Yeah. And I'm sure we'll do more of those in the future with other content creators.

• 17:16

Don't worry. Hold your pants. Some people are spamming their favorite creators. But

• 17:21

obviously, as we get closer to Alpha 2, there will be more opportunities for hyping things

• 17:28

up and getting more excited. This is just more so to answer some questions from the

• 17:31

community and make sure that we give some love to some folks. And then with that, we

• 17:36

also have just a reminder that the cosmetics will be swapping over for flavors of ephelerin.

• 17:43

And that will be April 12, 2023 at 11am Pacific. Reminder of that. And of course, for those

• 17:49

of you who are content creators, we do have a content creator program that you can check

• 17:53

out. You can go to our FAQ database and type in content creator and it'll show for you.

• 18:01

But we are currently just taking applications for that. I know a lot of content creators

• 18:05

have been asking when we're going to do invites. Those invites will probably be closer to when

• 18:09

we're getting to Alpha 2. So as we start ramping that up, you'll probably be like, what's happening?

• 18:14

But we will start sending invites closer to that timeframe. Right now, we're focused on

• 18:18

just application phase, which is a lot of folks. And we're very excited that so many

• 18:22

people are interested in joining us on this crazy adventure. And with that, I'm going

Carphin Preview

• 18:29

to hand it over to Stephen to give us a little preface before we show you a little walkthrough

• 18:34

of Carfin. So some of you might have seen maybe some leaks that I did in Margaret's

• 18:43

absence while she was at PAX. Oh, I saw. I know, I'm sorry. But this month we wanted

• 18:51

to showcase the Tower of Carfin from a lore perspective. And then in addition, we wanted

• 19:00

to showcase some systems, new systems that have been brought online from a narrative

• 19:05

perspective as well as it relates to our story arcs. So this is a deep dive in both the lore

• 19:12

of Carfin as well as the system of our story arcs and how they change the world around

• 19:20

you to reflect different chapters and or paths that story arcs can take based off of player

• 19:27

activity. You'll see the world change a little bit. I want to preface that, of course, this

• 19:33

is all a work in progress. You are taking a look at something that is still very much

• 19:38

in the alpha phase, both visually and in particular, you'll notice before the transition of the

• 19:48

zone, which happens about six minutes into this video, you'll see it in the non-active

• 19:54

state. And there's some lighting there that we're still fixing and some of the materials

• 19:59

and whatnot, but you're going to see it in the corrupt state after about the six minute

• 20:05

mark and it is pretty gnarly. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it is absolutely. It's just, yeah,

• 20:11

it's neat. It's different and more dynamic and I think that people are going to like

• 20:17

it. So, yes. So you guys will enjoy. We'll see you on the flip side.

• 20:32

Hello everyone and welcome to another stream from Vera. We have been building up, I think,

• 20:43

to this moment a little bit in the showcase for the Tower at Carvan. And I think there's

• 20:52

been some lore that we've released during last November's Extra Life livestream. We

• 21:00

played through a portion, I believe, of this tower. And now we have an opportunity to take

• 21:06

a look together, a little sneak peek, a small portion of this area and the lore behind it.

• 21:14

And we're also going to take a focus with some of the developers that'll be joining

• 21:19

us here in a second. I'll introduce them into the system of our story arcs and how that

• 21:25

system works in reflecting the changes that players elicit from the world of Vera. So

• 21:35

I want to introduce one of our senior designers, Scott. How are you doing, buddy?

• 21:44

Doing very good. Thank you for asking.

• 21:47

Welcome. Welcome to your design become reality.

• 21:52

Thank you.

• 21:55

This is Scott has been working on the narrative for this particular story arc that we're all

• 22:00

going to see in a second with his with his team, with whom we are joined by one of our

• 22:07

designers, Aimee. Aimee, how are you doing?

• 22:10

Hi, I'm doing good, Stephen.

• 22:13

Welcome. This is I think is this your first time on the stream?

• 22:17

It is. Yeah.

• 22:18

That is awesome. Aimee is one of our incredibly talented designers who is helping create the

• 22:25

narrative around Vera. And you guys may have played some of her quests in Alpha One, actually.

• 22:35

One in particular is the I believe it was the lost pages and the that spider quest.

• 22:41

Is that right? I mean, was it were those yours?

• 22:45

Those were my quests. Yeah. Thanks for remembering that.

• 22:48

I know they're great.

• 22:50

Yeah. Super excited to join today.

• 22:54

We're very excited to have you. And then in addition, we have what is soon becoming a

• 23:01

regular on the streams. Mr. Jeremy, one of our senior designers, how you doing, buddy?

• 23:08

I'm doing good. Happy to show off Scott's masterpiece creation here.

• 23:12

Yeah.

• 23:13

Laying it on thick.

• 23:16

I know. Wow.

• 23:18

Love it.

• 23:19

Pretty exciting.

• 23:20

It is exciting. It is exciting.

• 23:21

I mean, I've always said that nodes is the new hotness that we've been showing and story

• 23:26

arcs are the new hotness we've been hiding.

• 23:28

Yes. Agreed. Totally agree. So one of the first things that you guys are going to notice

• 23:35

in this environment is that we have this perspective of the of the tower. And I think, Scott, do

• 23:45

you want to talk a little bit about story arcs as a system?

• 23:49

Yeah, sure. So it's helpful, I think, to think about story arcs as kind of like a like a

• 23:56

prepackaged tabletop campaign. They contain like all of the NPCs and quests and monsters,

• 24:02

like all the things you need to make like a cool fantasy story. They're not procedurally

• 24:06

generated. We author them. We write all the dialog and we construct all the narrative

• 24:10

beats and everything like that. But they will enter the world dynamically depending on the

• 24:17

state that the world is currently in, how players have built up specific nodes, like

• 24:22

what races control various nodes. We have plans to include lots of different things

• 24:28

on top of that. But yeah, it's we don't have any quest hubs or anything like that in this

• 24:34

game because players build up all the cities. So we had to get a system that kind of looks

• 24:39

at what players are doing and can inject content into the world that makes sense for what they're

• 24:44

doing.

• 24:45

So we see it as like the the world decides in the state that it's in that we're going

• 24:49

to now play this module. We're going to because of the state of the nodes being in this way

• 24:55

and certain races have this one, we're going to play her substrata. We're going to do Blood

• 25:00

Still Do. We're going to do those modules and things.

• 25:04

So one of the things that I find most unique about our story arc system is that they're

• 25:09

intended to represent change, change within the story of what Vera is telling. And we

• 25:19

don't just do that through these new quest logs and and and dialogue, but also by literally

• 25:27

changing the environments and showing these active states that represent what is happening

• 25:34

and what choices the players have made previously in the different chapters, perhaps, of other

• 25:39

story arcs. Scott, I know that we have been working hard on this. Your team has been working

• 25:44

particularly hard and with engineering to kind of stand the system up over the last

• 25:49

several months. But you have the ability to push us into the next chapter manually, correct?

• 25:57

Yeah. Normally, this is a story that require us to have built up some of the nodes in the

• 26:05

area. Either you could just build up mirrorless directly to get access to where we're going,

• 26:10

or any of the nodes in the riverlands could have leveled up to a certain amount to have

• 26:16

basically enabled the story to spawn. But I'll just I'll just turn this on for us now

• 26:21

manually. Let's see. That's good. Get ready, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Welcome.

• 26:26

I push it takes a second, but it will kick on to the Tower of Cartham. And Houston. There

• 26:41

goes. Oh, things are getting red. The complete. What is that? The blood. Oh, the blood still

• 27:07

do. There it is. It's paying right now. Oh, my gosh. So yeah, when StorX come online,

• 27:16

they change a lot of the environment, they update what monsters are in the world. They

• 27:22

create quests NPCs, you can see Orin, he's not normally here. We've moved him for the

• 27:28

sake of this. And then yeah, new pathways can open up through the environment. Is the

• 27:36

bridge moving? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's nasty. What are the vines? It's you know,

• 27:49

it's corruption. There's so a very, a very terrible curse is sort of remaining here after

• 27:59

a sort of desperate spell was cast during the Harbinger apocalypse. You saw a bit of

• 28:07

that spell being replayed at the top of the tower there. But when the ancients were advancing

• 28:13

toward the Aelin capital, where Carfin is strategically positioned between where the

• 28:18

Harbinger Comet landed and the Aelin capital, the mages here and Carfin was known throughout

• 28:24

the Aelin Empire for its magical prowess. The head mage here did a very desperate and

• 28:31

dangerous spell to slow the ancients advance. And that was to buy the time for the for the

• 28:39

capital of Aela where they were building one of the divine gateways. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

• 28:44

I'm sort of opening people to get out. Right. They needed more time. They needed to make

• 28:49

space for them. They did something pretty terrible to do that. It bought them the time.

• 28:54

But as you can see, this once great city has suffered a great cost. This is I like the

• 29:01

little jump puzzle. This is awesome. This what is that here all the time? The story

• 29:10

are help this bridge form. This bridge might also appear if you've leveled up mirrorless

• 29:17

enough to create kind of this pathway. Otherwise, there's other ways to get there, but more

• 29:21

dangerous ways. Is that a what is that down there? That's a fiend golem. A fiend golem.

• 29:29

Fiend version. Oh, I like how the light just lit up to showcase the the body. That's crazy.

• 29:39

That's super cool. And they so now the the spawn tables around the city of Carfin have

• 29:50

changed as a result of the story arc progression. Right. So normally when the city is not in

• 29:58

its cursed state, you've got a whole subset of like like constructs and various other

• 30:04

like arcane things like you saw the animated numbers and stuff like that. While the fences.

• 30:09

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the curse is in effect. We've got these watchfuls, these seekers here

• 30:16

who they have their own sort of story and reason for being here while the curse is active.

• 30:21

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And they've got their summon watchfuls watching their backs as they're

• 30:34

doing what they're doing. Wow. The environment team did an unbelievable job here. They did

• 30:41

a killer job on this. Yeah, this looks so good. It's a blood curse. They really took

• 30:51

that personally. They said, oh, you want to see what corruption looks like? I know. Well,

• 30:57

what is talk to us a little bit about blood magic versus just normal corruption. So, yeah,

• 31:05

blood magic is a sort of illegal kind of magic and using it in any amounts creates a certain

• 31:12

amount of corruption in the caster. And that corruption can bleed over into environments

• 31:17

and things that they draw essence from in order to cast those spells. This was this

• 31:23

was a blood magic that obviously consumed a whole heck of a lot of it. She wasn't intending

• 31:30

for this kind of after effect. No, no. Yeah, the major cast this did not was not able to

• 31:39

understand the scope of the destruction that that would cause. But also in the final, you

• 31:45

know, the final days of, you know, ancient vera during the harbinger apocalypse, like

• 31:50

you didn't have a lot of time to research. There was not a whole lot of deliberation.

• 31:52

There wasn't a lot of a whole lot of like magical research and safety precautions that

• 31:58

they could take. So, yeah, it did its job, but, you know. Yeah, it seemed to like even

• 32:11

if it delayed a lot of the a lot of the progress they made towards the portal, it seemed like

• 32:17

they really created a lot of destruction along the way. Carpenter itself has a lot of history

• 32:24

built into the environment here, too. You'll see lots of statues and stuff around that

• 32:29

go into it. One of the five of the five main city states by primary city states of the

• 32:36

island people. And they would form into the island empire following the Great War of the

• 32:43

Undying with King Aetrax. Right now, so many people are just like, oh, my God, we're finally

• 32:51

getting lore. We could go all day on it if you want. We could, yeah. We don't want to

• 32:57

give it all away. Well, the story is kind of told over the course of four phases, four

• 33:05

chapters. Each chapter will update spawns, change the quest givers, change what quests

• 33:12

are available. And that's across the server. It's not like your individual progress phases

• 33:20

that is the actual quest themselves. You can progress kind of at your own pace. But as

• 33:24

long as it's within the window of that quest phase being active. I mean, who honestly has

• 33:29

this much blood to spare? This is crazy. This is. We're actually trying to figure out the

• 33:36

science of like if you took an entire city's worth of people, how many cups of blood would

• 33:40

you have? Probably not very many. Less than you think, but it wouldn't be as dramatic

• 33:47

if we were super realistic with it. It's magic. Yeah, it's magic. Blood is persistent and

• 33:54

eternal. Yeah. Unless we can do something about this curse. I don't know, Stephen, if

• 34:12

you stopped and talked to Ornn and pick up that quest or not. Oh, no, I did not. Oh,

• 34:17

that's okay. I think you still have all the quests that were in there before. Yeah, let

• 34:21

me grab it. What do I open my journal again? What is that? It's L. L. That's right. Yeah,

• 34:26

L to open your journal. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Yeah, you can see there's other

• 34:29

story arcs going on as well. The phase timers in there indicate how much real world time

• 34:35

is available to like do the quests in that phase. I see. And what quests you do or the

• 34:42

quests that you do, like it's not just a matter of completing the laundry list of things that

• 34:46

the NPC has you do, but you pick from a whole bunch of objectives, many of them optional.

• 34:51

Some of them, if not most of them hidden when you first undertake the quest. So, you know,

• 34:56

go dig up a guide or blaze your own trail or whatever. But depending on which objectives

• 35:00

you complete, those are the things that help the server aggregate what is going to happen

• 35:05

in later phases of the story arc. And that's like across all of the players participating

• 35:10

during that time frame, what objectives they decide to complete. That's what drives what

• 35:15

happens in later. Awesome. What quests are available, what NPCs are pulling ahead of

• 35:20

other NPCs in terms of their progress toward their goals. And how you complete your quest

• 35:26

matters. Yes. Yeah. With some objectives, you know, being exclusive of one another.

• 35:32

So helping one NPC will lock you out of helping a different NPC. So, yeah, it's we don't.

• 35:40

Oh, no. Wow. I'm just I'm just taking in the sheer beauty, but also like a kind of gross

• 35:48

beauty of this environment. It is so eerie. I think even the corrupted trees, you can

• 35:59

harvest them. Find some of them that you can harvest and chop them down. Oh, really? Yeah,

• 36:10

they're a little bit hard to spot, though. Well, also the I believe that as part of these

• 36:21

environments changing, you're also activating rare resource spawners that might only occur

• 36:28

during certain events. Yeah, that's correct. So, yeah, yeah. Like corrupted soul bloom.

• 36:35

And there was one that Kory had just put in. All those things are only available during

• 36:41

certain story arcs and every story arc has its kind of special things that you want to

• 36:45

try and take advantage of. And that one in your backyard, swing by and pick them up for

• 36:50

herbalism, for making certain potions. Sometimes you want to take advantage of the limited

• 36:56

time you have during the story arcs to get some of these rare resources for crafting

• 37:01

things, certain poisons and potions from these limited corrupted spirit blooms, right? Yep.

• 37:10

Sorry, I just disabled my HUD right now. I want to like this area is just too crazy.

• 37:18

Huge tower. It looks so good. Jeremy and Hal and Adam, I think. Who's all working on this?

• 37:31

Jeremy. Zach and Brandon. Everybody. Scott. Other Scott. Yeah. Not me. Tristan. Tristan's

• 37:39

entire team. Yeah, this is absolutely beautiful. And talk to me a little bit about the dungeon.

• 37:48

So the dungeon we're heading to right here, that's the Tower of Carthen. That is the mage

• 37:53

university that following the War of the Undying, the elves, that oh, these humans, there's

• 38:00

something to them. Let's gift them the gift of magic and how. Let's show them the advanced

• 38:08

stuff. You can see some of that story reflected here on these murals. Build them a university.

• 38:14

Hold on to stuff and we can teach them the way we want to have them. And the human said,

• 38:21

yeah, show us. I think we ran by the deans, the first deans of the statues back here.

• 38:29

Oh, yeah, we should look at this. I really love how some of the ornate detail in the

• 38:37

buildings have so much symbolism attached to them. It really makes it feel like there's

• 38:42

a kind of steep like if you go back to the. Yeah, that's right over here. Back to the

• 38:48

statues we ran past. Yeah. All the former headmaster. These are the former deans. Right.

• 38:56

So this one up front here, that's Tanfileris Wren. He's the elf that came over from the

• 39:03

elves and from the Pyrion elves at the time. And you can see he's kind of built the tower

• 39:14

for them. Started training the first students. Then one of the other towers is his best student,

• 39:23

Aristod. I should point out his statue in a bit here. So he was the first human dean

• 39:30

he's this one here. You can see him kind of with the book open. That was Aristod. Wow.

• 39:37

The first one after Tanfileris went back to the elves after a few decades. We've got

• 39:47

Dean over here is the woman that's that's Jenica. And the good and interesting thing

• 39:54

about her is that she never died. She was into teleportation and that was her her big

• 40:01

area of expertise. And she just never came back. Hint, hint, hook. Oh, I see what you

• 40:10

did. Yeah. Then we have one of Lamont's, Auron over here. That's a Daren, Daren Lamont. He

• 40:22

was a dean of the college. He looks like a wise guy. Auron's family is quite they're

• 40:32

quite central to the to the story here. There'll be lots of opportunities to learn lots of

• 40:37

them in this story arc, actually. That is awesome. The final one there's a Klon Zander.

• 40:43

He was all into alchemy. So that was his area of expertise that he really. Oh, yeah. So

• 40:49

if you see a lot of maybe some potions in the game with a Klon or or no Zander so and

• 40:56

so that that's the guy. What do we have here? Just a very normal looking door, probably

• 41:04

nothing terrible. I mean, this mural. Oh, the humans asking the pyre for help with magic.

• 41:13

The periods. Yeah. Yeah. The period. I got a teaching period teaching the ten killer

• 41:21

or the alien at that point. Yeah. And over here. Oh, the five moons, the towers, construction

• 41:31

and the five months phases of the moon, three months. The three phases or five phases. Yeah.

• 41:41

Perfect. Very cool. And we also have there's yeah, the symbology for the period. You notice

• 41:48

the doors. You have a lion head on one side representing humans and the griffin head on

• 41:53

the other representing the elves. We're the guys pulling the doors open. Just a couple

• 42:01

of guards. What is this sandal? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. That made me cough a storm. That

• 42:18

is hilarious. That is hilarious. I love it. All right. So what is our objective here?

• 42:25

What are we looking for inside right now? Now, this is just the entrance, the foyer

• 42:31

of the tower of the university. Yeah. So we're not going to obviously take you through everything.

• 42:39

A lot of it's still a work in progress. Always remember that this is a work in progress right

• 42:43

now. This is part of the Alpha two experience. You'll be able to explore, delve into this

• 42:49

dungeon. So what are we going to see in here? Even more corruption and more more blood for

• 43:00

sure. I like the bell. The gong is cool. Yeah, I guess it is a bell. Oh, my God. Wow. This

• 43:26

looks great. I love this interior. The lighting is so moody. Oh, my God. This is like the

• 43:36

supreme edge lord environment. Take a look around at this. Just over there to get our

• 43:42

loot. Even the gothic-esque lamp with the nasty like flesh environment. Oh, God. Oh,

• 43:55

we have some loot. Is this like a treasure chest? That's a treasure chest. Whoa. Or not.

• 44:04

Oh, no, no, no. Not like that. Nuke it from orbit. Nuke it from orbit. Oh, thank you.

• 44:11

Perfect. Where'd it go? Where did it go? Behind us now. Oh, come here. Oh, my God. This thing

• 44:22

is crazy. Look at it. These are just the entrance mobs? It's just the entrance, yeah. Oh, no.

• 44:34

Oh, no. This guy is nasty. Now, these tend to do some nasty things when they die, right?

• 44:45

I mean, this is basically like a... What is this? A hoarder? AKA mimic? No, I'm just kidding.

• 44:51

This looks... Baron hoarder. Get away from it. Get away. Run. Get back. Get back. Get

• 45:01

away. No. You're pulling it into the party. Oh, that is nasty. This is absolutely phenomenal.

• 45:17

Yeah, they did an incredible job on this. It just looks so good. Well, is there anything

• 45:25

else that you guys want to touch on from the story arc perspective? Oh, I guess there's

• 45:34

one thing people might be curious about. I mentioned how you could do what you needed

• 45:37

to do as long as the phase... You can do any quests available in that phase while that

• 45:42

phase is available. So what happens if you miss something, you go on vacation or whatever,

• 45:48

and you can't log in during the week to participate in the quests that are going on in the phase

• 45:52

of that story arc. For most story arcs, they do repeat. After they complete, they'll go

• 45:57

on a cool down and they will repeat again. You'll have another opportunity to get involved

• 46:00

with them the next time they come through. For our big major world spanning story arcs

• 46:08

that will tell your server's own story, those ones don't repeat. Those are one and done.

• 46:15

You can replay them. There's a different system for replaying previous phases for the big

• 46:21

main story arcs. However, decisions and objectives you make in those won't count toward your

• 46:27

server's... What's canonized for your server, which is our way of saying what decisions

• 46:33

they make for the objectives and stuff that you completed.

• 46:36

And all this goes to really kind of creating that experience of player agency being seen

• 46:47

through world building and actually changing the locations, the environment, the story,

• 46:53

and how it influences future arcs down that path for the world to kind of reflect. It

• 46:59

creates such a unique, I feel, environment between different servers and the histories

• 47:06

that they create. Exactly. I think Jeremy said it really well

• 47:11

earlier when we were trying to help figure out the right words to describe these very

• 47:15

complicated systems. In MMO, you have different philosophies on kind of storytelling. We're

• 47:24

going to more old school, like the world has a story and you're playing within the world

• 47:28

story. And in our case, you're helping to guide that by the decisions that you make

• 47:33

while doing your quests and the different players. If one goes one, if a bunch go one

• 47:38

way and a few go the other way, that kind of canonizes down that way. More recent MMOs

• 47:44

have just focused the story on the player and used instance and phasing to tell individual

• 47:50

stories at different times and at different durations. We're more old school saying the

• 47:59

world is evolving, you participate in how the world story is going. More on how you

• 48:06

owe and EverQuest and those games. Lineage. Yeah, lineage. Everybody is playing in the

• 48:15

same world and the state of that world is something that everybody is building together.

• 48:19

All great games. Absolutely. Well, go ahead, Amy. Sorry. I was going to say that one of

• 48:26

the major goals I feel like we have is to allow player decisions to have consequences

• 48:34

and to have meaningful results from the decisions that they make. So it seems like people can

• 48:42

really create their own stories. Absolutely. Phenomenal work, guys. Well, I want to thank

• 48:49

you three for joining me to help kind of give players a peek, a little peek under the hood

• 48:54

for the Tower of Carthen as I train your party. I apologize. And I cannot tell you how beautiful

• 49:01

and unbelievable this this area is. I mean, the artists are just are phenomenal. So killer,

• 49:08

killer job. So so fun. With that being said, we're going to go run back to the stream.

• 49:15

Super exciting stuff. And we will be back with you in just a moment. Thank you, guys.

• 49:35

Love seeing the reactions in chat whenever stuff started changing on the screen. I was

• 49:40

like, yes, we hope that you are as excited as we are for the dynamic questing system

• 49:47

and content and how it interacts with the nodes. Yeah. You know, this this particular

• 49:53

dungeon is a big one. It is a massive one. It is the largest in the Riverlands and it

• 50:01

is a major quest hub for Alpha 2. So this is you guys will probably be spending a lot

• 50:10

of time in this dungeon. You know, one of the key takeaways from the system, from the

• 50:16

system side of this with regards to story arcs, story arcs for something very early

• 50:22

on that we decided was necessary to facilitate how players interacted and changed the world.

• 50:31

Right. We have this context of a very world building kind of oriented game with the node

• 50:37

system. And then we needed something complimentary on the narrative side that can actually facilitate

• 50:43

the feeling from a player's perspective of my actions have consequences. My actions direct

• 50:49

the way that the server goes. And it had to be adaptive. But I noticed there were some

• 50:55

questions the questions and I apologize. Yeah, I've got some questions as well. Yeah, I apologize

• 51:00

again for being sick for this stream. But we had some I saw we had some questions about

• 51:06

like, you know, can I redo different chapters of the story arcs? And yeah, as that as that

• 51:12

chapter is present, you know, these these story arc chapters, they exist for potentially

• 51:18

days at a time so that people have an opportunity to kind of move from story arc to story arc,

• 51:23

do things across the world. We don't want a narrative system that is like highly dependent

• 51:29

on dailies or weeklies where you kind of feel this this need to log in to stay competitive

• 51:37

and and you know, it becomes a chore and not really indicative of the type of gameplay

• 51:44

I feel as MMO players we want to have. And so the story arc system is really meant to

• 51:49

provide these many cycles of interactive and compelling stories that are occurring simultaneously

• 51:57

around the world and direct the future story arcs that come next based off of what branch

• 52:05

is taken as an outcome of the particular story. So for example, in the Tower of Carfin, there

• 52:11

are two ways that this particular story arc can end that can end with a boss encounter

• 52:16

at the top of the tower, or it can end with a boss encounter that's at the at the ground

• 52:21

level in the supporting city around the tower. And when one of those branches gets gets decided

• 52:30

on or gets interacted with on the on the narrative side, that dictates future branches of the

• 52:40

story arcs that come thereafter. So players can can go back and if you know you do the

• 52:47

boss fight and your friends log in later and they want to go to the boss fight you can

• 52:51

participate in those in those in those chapters multiple times right you're not locked out

• 52:56

from doing it again. The with the major story arcs when the first when the first branches

• 53:02

decided that is a bit of a canonization for the server. And it creates a really interesting

• 53:07

linear storyline and history that each server experiences differently from another. And

• 53:16

that I feel is something that really has never been represented in MMOs before. One other

• 53:21

thing I want to say is that for those of you who've been following the Ashes development

• 53:26

since like you know 2017 and 2018, we've talked a lot about how corruption this red influence

• 53:34

and the use of you know this evil-esque type of magic influences the world around you.

• 53:42

And this is a great example in the city of Carthen where you can see how a variant of

• 53:49

that corruption blood magic variant has its own style guide, its own its own you know

• 53:57

indication of what is what is going on in this area. And we've you know we've we've

• 54:02

always been an alpha one you kind of saw a few of that a couple places for the corruption

• 54:06

influences back in 21. But really it's a large part of how these zones adapt and can change

• 54:14

around you know corruption is always trying to encroach on civilization. That's a larger

• 54:19

civilization builds. We did have some people asking questions regarding corruption and

• 54:25

I think it kind of ties in with what you're saying. Seven Six was asking will PVP be the

• 54:30

defining reason for corruption and you're kind of like saying that no it's not. No no

• 54:34

no no no no. So so so PVP is tied into corruption right to a degree your mortal coil as we call

• 54:43

it or what some might consider a soul from your character's perspective within the story

• 54:48

can be influenced and can be changed into a shape that's that's more in tune with corruption

• 54:55

and that's through doing PVP things you can accomplish that. But really when you think

• 54:59

about what corruption is corruption is a representation of the ancients magic the ancients hatred

• 55:07

the ancients desire to strike back at the creation of what their the gods who banished

• 55:12

them to the void have tried to accomplish on Vera. And so corruption is this influence

• 55:19

of the essence that permeates around locations in the world and tries to pervert what that

• 55:26

creation is. That really is what corruption is. You know what that disgusting foot this

• 55:34

is that's the one situation where I'd be okay with socks and sandals though. Just gonna

• 55:40

say just gonna put it out there. Sandals great the environment team by the way you know I

• 55:45

think they always sneak them in. Yes they do but I think everyone who's watching really

• 55:50

can give some hearts and chat. Our environment team is absolutely phenomenal and you're just

• 55:56

seeing kind of first passes on these environments with the alpha you know zones really this

• 56:03

is still not near where we intend and you guys watch improvement month after month and

• 56:10

in test environment after test environment. But the idea is to create a rich world that

• 56:17

is visually stunning and compelling and I think that the mood of this particular zone

• 56:25

is well communicated through what the environment artist team has been able to accomplish. And

• 56:31

how it changes with the dynamic quest stuff is pretty amazing. So yeah and not just our

• 56:37

environment team but also our tech art team as well. It did a phenomenal job in assisting

• 56:42

creating this area. All right I have a few more questions. I did want to mention because

• 56:49

some people were asking about the icon in the corner next to Steven's nameplate. That

• 56:55

little icon is actually his like secondary archetype that he hasn't unlocked and that

• 56:59

will change. Yes yeah so the idea there is to indicate through the party UI so that you

• 57:04

can see kind of secondary class choices that are made and that can be changed of course

• 57:10

players can can reselect different secondary archetypes through respecing but your primary

• 57:16

archetype remains the same and that gets unlocked when you do unlock that. Yeah and so people

• 57:22

were noticing that we had one of our folks with a sword over their shoulder and they

• 57:27

were wondering if that's a new idle animation and when that happens or if there's going

• 57:32

to be more stuff like that or if they can select which ones they have. So our animation

• 57:37

team Chris Myers and a few others part of the feedback that we got from the tank demonstration

• 57:46

when we were holding that two-handed sword was that people would like to see variants

• 57:51

of the types of non-combat idle stances that can be had with certain weapons and so we

• 57:57

decided to introduce you know a variant of that with having the shoulder rest on the

• 58:01

shoulder and that is something that we'll be exploring further to see kind of just how

• 58:08

much runway we can get out of custom and or selective idle stances. I know we want to

• 58:16

add a lot of you know flavor to the character and the persona that you that you have and

• 58:23

obviously idle stances can be a part of that display. All right and then Galadeon wants

• 58:29

to know will this environment change based on season as well? Yes so the vast majority

• 58:37

of environments in the game have some seasonal interaction. Some environments have four seasons

• 58:44

some environments have two and you know you can see that demonstrated you know mainly

• 58:52

through like snow and or but when it enters the corruption state outside of weather in

• 58:58

that corrupt state you will probably see a little bit less of the influence of the season

• 59:04

because really it's adopting that corruption which is in and of itself is kind of a season.

• 59:11

Something in the same in this area and then Lightfoo is wondering because Aimee had mentioned

• 59:17

oh yeah you can harvest the trees and things like that if there will be like special types

• 59:21

of trees and things of that sort for special crafted items. You know corruption isn't all

• 59:27

bad from a gameplay perspective from a mechanics perspective meaning that certain types of

• 59:34

resources will have a corrupt state and it will be necessary for you to acquire you know

• 59:40

like we have a spirit bloom which is a harvestable herbalism plant but in when a zone becomes

• 59:49

corrupt you can potentially yield corrupted spirit blooms and those are necessary components

• 59:56

of certain crafting recipes and so corruption also services the idea that as these zones

• 1:00:05

change and adapt to reflect you know the different statuses of corruption or seasons so do the

• 1:00:10

harvestables and that's that's an important part of the overall economy.

• 1:00:15

All right and then Fireoofly wants to know this is an open world dungeon right what prevents

• 1:00:24

others from just waiting until you're at the boss and then killing you and taking your

• 1:00:29

boss's loot and then related to that what prevents mega guilds from just owning an area

• 1:00:34

and preventing you from accessing or enjoying it. I did see a couple other people asking

• 1:00:37

this in different terminology but yeah.

• 1:00:40

So a couple things there first of all first thing is is we don't want in the majority

• 1:00:45

of cases we do not want to prevent another group from engaging potentially in PvP we

• 1:00:51

disincentivize it by creating safeguards within the flagging system that make that decision

• 1:00:58

very concerning for the people that might go corrupt right and if you're in the large enough

• 1:01:04

group of numbers I doubt you're going to experience that unless there's some rivalry between guilds

• 1:01:10

in which case like you know there's apparatuses like Guild Wars that are more opt-in you can

• 1:01:14

drop guild tag if you want but anyways competitive the competitive nature of this environment

• 1:01:19

is is a PvX element however in situations where we want to contain a particular type

• 1:01:29

of raid we will utilize instancing and that can protect certain engagements with certain

• 1:01:34

bosses but that's really more on the 20% of 20% of the scenarios will have instancing

• 1:01:45

protection like that around 80% of the content is open world where competition is healthy

• 1:01:51

competition is an instigator for soft player friction for potential cooperation for the

• 1:01:58

ability to yield alliances and the political you know theater that comes with it so that's

• 1:02:03

an intended part of the PvX design of Ashes that's a it's a core philosophical point.

• 1:02:08

All right and just to be clear that is not for everyone we are not trying to make a product

• 1:02:18

that appeals to every MMO gamer that's impossible and so we've been very upfront and forthright

• 1:02:26

with what we are trying to accomplish and what our core pillars of philosophical design

• 1:02:31

are and that's an okay thing and if if the thought of player competition of potential

• 1:02:38

threat and soft friction is not one that resonates with you there are plenty of games out there

• 1:02:46

that are not focused around those philosophies and that's entirely acceptable.

• 1:02:51

All right with that I'm going to move on to our art we have a lot of cool art to share

Character Art Update

• 1:02:57

with you all the character and concept teams have been kicking some booty and the first

• 1:03:04

one here actually you saw these but I think being able to see them kind of in like a 3d

• 1:03:09

element here on their own these are the statues from Carfen that were being worked on and

• 1:03:15

you can just see I mean you saw how massive these things are but the detail and as Jeremy

• 1:03:20

I know was talking about the lore behind these different folks except I don't think they

• 1:03:25

had the the ones that were holding the chain but they didn't have the lore for that but

• 1:03:30

I'm sure they'll they'll write something up if they haven't already but yeah they've gone

• 1:03:36

into a lot of detail for these people and like what they're wearing and what they're

• 1:03:40

holding and the symbolization of that.

• 1:03:42

Yeah these are great.

• 1:03:45

Oh go ahead.

• 1:03:47

I was just gonna say I love the massiveness that it really adds to the environment to

• 1:03:53

have these large character statues and they are as you guys heard from a lore perspective

• 1:03:58

they have great relevancy to the story of what came before your people so it's cool

• 1:04:05

to kind of dig into that and it'll be weaved throughout different narratives as well.

• 1:04:10

And then you did see in a previous live stream a few of the Carfen weapons and these are

• 1:04:14

just some more that are being worked on very exciting so I'm sure folks will enjoy getting

• 1:04:21

that loot I know there was questions about why the hoarder didn't have loot there will

• 1:04:24

be loot my friends.

• 1:04:28

Remember that remember everything you guys see you know is not going to be fully comprehensive

• 1:04:35

of what we would expect in a finished MMO product you're getting snippets of very specific

• 1:04:42

demonstrations and this one was about the area of Carfen and about the story arc system

• 1:04:49

so you know we're very still in development very much so in development and because of

• 1:04:55

that you know we're aware of what's outstanding of what we want to show that doesn't mean

• 1:05:01

that we're not cognizant of that fact you guys are seeing it we know it exists and we

• 1:05:06

have things that we're still working on and you know that's acceptable.

• 1:05:10

Of course and I like Alex Xavier's they're like they're a baby hoarder they haven't found

• 1:05:16

stuff to eat yet.

• 1:05:17

Yeah a little baby hoarder.

• 1:05:20

It is a small one I'm sure there's gonna be bigger ones and then of course we have like

• 1:05:27

you saw the little pustulas in the world creepy gross stuff you can kind of see the concept

• 1:05:33

of those we have some costumes this is the autumn collar you know they're trying to get

• 1:05:41

this in for some NPCs that they're working on.

• 1:05:44

Looks great.

• 1:05:46

And then also the giant slayer.

• 1:05:50

I love it that looks like a very painful armor to fight against.

• 1:05:58

Well I mean there might be a reason why we need the giant slayer armor it's called giant

• 1:06:03

slayer for a reason and then we've also got the alpine baghorn which is awesome so cool

• 1:06:14

like oh he's cool it's so fluffy.

• 1:06:21

Next up we have shown some of our race additions as we've gone forward and adjusted things

• 1:06:29

and now we have another update of a couple of them so we know we got a lot of feedback

• 1:06:34

on our dwarf friends and now you're getting to see a little bit more of the female dwarf

• 1:06:40

here her mutton chops I love them a little bit more stout.

• 1:06:54

Looks great.

• 1:06:57

And if you watched our character creator or if you haven't watched our character creator

• 1:07:01

stream I would recommend going to our YouTube channel and checking it out you can you know

• 1:07:07

change the level of wrinkles on them as well so you could be more older looking if you'd

• 1:07:12

like to be or younger and more useful.

• 1:07:15

She's got some intense crow feet going on there.

• 1:07:19

All right and next up is the veloun here to judge us she's a very judgy look on her face.

• 1:07:33

I mean she could just be very discerning.

• 1:07:37

In that one shot she's like.

• 1:07:44

Love these guys they look great.

• 1:07:46

Yeah and you're I mean we've talked about their kind of the relation to the gin and

• 1:07:53

you're gonna get to see a little bit of that today so stick around and it's pretty sick

• 1:07:59

looking so.

• 1:08:03

That's the female and then we also have the male.

• 1:08:12

Looks good and I know we showed in the past I mean these are the models but we showed

• 1:08:16

in the past the.

• 1:08:18

Concepts.

• 1:08:19

Concepts so like you can see how one-to-one these concepts are to the model it's great

• 1:08:24

artists do such a great job.

• 1:08:26

Our artists I mean we were getting some hearts in the chat not only our environment artists

• 1:08:31

but like our character artists it's just bonkers.

• 1:08:35

And just so you guys know Intrepid isn't entirely independent meaning nothing that you're seeing

• 1:08:43

here is outsourced comes from another studio this is all our internal art teams so it was

• 1:08:51

very important to us that when defining the look and the visuals of the world that we

• 1:08:57

create that internally and our our teams are just are phenomenal.

• 1:09:03

Yeah thank you guys for being awesome.

• 1:09:06

Now the gin version.

• 1:09:10

A little little teaser.

• 1:09:13

Oh that's cool it's got some of the some of the the darkness around the eyes got the

• 1:09:23

emissives on the forehead and on the skin too like the tattoos very cool.

• 1:09:33

Yeah.

• 1:09:35

Very nice.

• 1:09:39

Good stuff.

• 1:09:40

I think that gets us all of all of those so hopefully you guys like a little like a little

• 1:09:48

update and then we're gonna go to our studio update and we're I didn't forget this time

Studio Update

• 1:09:54

you guys so I'll pass it on to you Stephen if you want to talk a little bit about maybe

• 1:09:59

what was accomplished in M4 what we're moving towards in M5 and maybe any other studio information

• 1:10:05

you think we should share with our folks.

• 1:10:08

Yeah you know for us.

• 1:10:13

Excuse me I'm sorry.

• 1:10:19

You're okay he's a little sick guys.

• 1:10:22

I apologize guys I didn't you know I haven't missed in a stream in ever since we started

• 1:10:28

doing them and even though I'm I'm literally dying right now.

• 1:10:37

So yeah M4 for us was a was a big milestone we hit some some some core some core objectives

• 1:10:48

both around design and engineering our 5.11 update which was you know a little bit a little

• 1:10:54

bit larger than we had anticipated but you know we took those punches you know the the

• 1:11:03

art teams the tech art teams have been doing a lot of optimization passes and has found

• 1:11:10

a lot of gains on that front we were dealing with a little bit of a DX issue which we got

• 1:11:15

some clarity on.

• 1:11:17

Also we've been fine-tuning a little bit of our architecture a bit more around some

• 1:11:21

of the gameplay systems and where things can share there's a lot of work done there you

• 1:11:28

know a lot of the definitions further further definitions around expanded scope of our of

• 1:11:34

our building types and architectures within the node some of the tools have been some

• 1:11:41

getting revamped there's been a lot of content progress that's made from the narrative teams

• 1:11:46

win with lore side that's been doing a lot of work and then you know of course on on

• 1:11:52

the asset creation side our character teams our animation teams the combat teams have

• 1:11:59

been doing a lot of work and in getting some of the expanded archetype development progressed

• 1:12:06

you guys are going to be seeing the mage next month and hopefully the Cyclops the month

• 1:12:10

thereafter talking a little bit about raids and whatnot so a lot of a lot of stuff a lot

• 1:12:17

of progress we you know just to give you guys an idea as we continue in production sometimes

• 1:12:24

we try different things from a production process perspective we introduced some different

• 1:12:32

approaches with the regards to strike teams and how we facilitate and do cross-departmental

• 1:12:37

collaboration with our strike team formats saw a lot of success in m4 out of those a

• 1:12:43

lot of good stuff there we have some great pickups and hires that have been facilitated

• 1:12:49

over the course of the last few months and then in addition which is kind of where I

• 1:12:54

think I got sick from GDC went to GDC those who don't know the game development conference

• 1:13:00

and San Francisco had a lot of great meetings there listened to a lot of great panels got

• 1:13:06

a little mobbed by some I spent a little bit of time on the expo floor the moment I walked

• 1:13:12

into that expo floor there's about 40 people that surrounded me in a circle of signing

• 1:13:17

some GDC badges and talking a little bit about acid crazier that was kind of cool that was

• 1:13:23

fun but you know we had we've had a really good m4 so it was very very cool and yeah

• 1:13:31

you know we're continuing to hire we have some goals this year that we want to achieve

• 1:13:34

and and you know it's a turbulent time in the industry I view Intrepid as kind of a

• 1:13:44

beacon project amidst the turmoil that we're seeing so you know those of you out there

• 1:13:50

who are who are impacted and or you know someone who's impacted send them our way we do get

• 1:13:56

a lot of applications each month you know I think we get I think our last report for

• 1:14:01

q1 of or the q1 report for this year we had probably about 2500 or 3000 applicants and

• 1:14:10

we hired of those I think like seven or eight I'm not sure so you know we're really selective

• 1:14:16

in the people we bring on board but you know our focus is to grow the studio considerably

• 1:14:22

this year so yeah and the way that I mean we are a little picky but it just goes to

• 1:14:28

show like yesterday when we were hanging out with everybody in a group you love everyone

• 1:14:34

you work with whenever you build that culture and ensure that the people that you're pulling

• 1:14:38

on board are all you know hard-working people who care and love love games and are passionate

• 1:14:45

about it and you can just see that in the work see that in the relationships that we

• 1:14:49

have built and it really is you know it's cliche I think a lot of times when people

• 1:14:53

say oh you're building a family but like I really think we are and there's a lot more

• 1:14:57

love and care because it's you know we're people first and then we are you know making

• 1:15:02

games secondary you know absolutely yeah all right anything else you want to mention on

Outro and Q&A

• 1:15:08

the studio update side I don't think so unless I'm missing something all right let's move

• 1:15:12

to the Q&A and then we will wrap this bad boy up on the QA Q&A front if you don't know

• 1:15:20

we always grab questions from the forums and Vaknar is amazing he goes through and answers

• 1:15:27

every one of your questions so if you asked a repeated question because we get a lot of

• 1:15:32

those we usually just give you guys those answers in the thread versus obviously putting

• 1:15:36

them on the stream here because we don't want to keep repeating ourselves too much and real

• 1:15:42

quick just for those of you who were watching the stream and you know under understandably

• 1:15:47

the quality of this video via the stream is not going to be as high as our 4k video which

• 1:15:52

we'll be uploading later today of this so you guys can see it in all its awe and glory

• 1:16:00

yeah we'll have that video up today and then we'll also have we already have a forum thread

• 1:16:06

up so if you'd like to give us feedback on that video or feedback on just what you saw

• 1:16:11

today yes feel free to head over to that that thread over on our forums forums.ashersofcreation.com

• 1:16:17

and let me help kind of contextualize the type of feedback that we're looking for from

• 1:16:21

this particular demonstration. Feedback one on the environments and what you're seeing

• 1:16:28

the mood setting the lighting the the size you know the idea of change adaptive dynamic

• 1:16:37

change that's an important one what do you like about that what are some of concerns

• 1:16:41

that you might have about that what are things that you feel we should look out for there

• 1:16:45

the second is going to be around the system of the story arcs and how they interface with

• 1:16:51

the world and sorry and and how do you feel that that story arc is going to interface

• 1:17:00

on the narrative side and on the world building side as well what are some concerns you have

• 1:17:06

there what are things that you saw that other games did well that you want to see as available

• 1:17:10

there that's it those are important points for feedback obviously the whole purpose of

• 1:17:14

our open development is to garner that feedback so that we don't end up on day one of launch

• 1:17:18

with with a game that you know people didn't ask for and don't you know want so this is

• 1:17:23

our opportunity to pulse check hey is our direction correct is this resonating with

• 1:17:28

people are these the types of ideas that you want to see in an MMORPG and that's how that's

• 1:17:34

how we value your guys's contribution during this journey yeah and I'm sure Vackner is

• 1:17:41

frantically updating that that thread now with those questions for context but we'll

• 1:17:46

get into the questions and this first one is from cast I and they would like to know

• 1:17:50

about mounts will mounts always be animals or will we have anime or inanimate objects

• 1:17:56

like magic carpets and magic brooms too I'm sorry can you repeat that one more time yeah

• 1:18:04

no problem will mounts always be animals or will we have inanimate objects like magic

• 1:18:10

carpets and magic brooms mounts are generally animals in ashes I'm not going to rule out

• 1:18:17

there's not an opportunity in the future to have and we might have in the past I'm not

• 1:18:21

sure I would have to double check but for the most part they're animals and if there

• 1:18:26

are non-animal type mounts then those would be very bespoke and unique yeah we have more

• 1:18:33

caravan oriented things one thing like that yeah and one thing that we would do that we

• 1:18:38

wouldn't do is is move into the steampunk type territory I you know it's one of the

• 1:18:46

designers when we were going through the cosmetics and we were designing like sets and they had

• 1:18:49

like this idea for kind of because we do have like arcane like engineering magic but they

• 1:18:54

wanted it was getting down the steam I was like I already know Steven's gonna tell me

• 1:18:57

no so you know yeah I mean for me I'm a very high it's not to say that people can't do

• 1:19:04

steampunk well I've enjoyed some steampunk stuff but I'm a very high fantasy oriented

• 1:19:11

type of storyteller and the inspiration for ashes obviously comes from my Pathfinder campaigns

• 1:19:17

that I ran long ago and those were always set in high fantasy world so I just it just

• 1:19:21

it just compromises what I believe is the perspective of the storytelling and the environment

• 1:19:25

yeah I mean we have we have built a brand and we're sticking to it and of course our

• 1:19:31

next question here is from digital daydream which is about gatherables well items in your

• 1:19:36

inventory expire or degrade such as meats fish berries or even crafted food and if so

• 1:19:42

will there be a way to mitigate this generally the answer is no they will not degrade we

• 1:19:51

do have the idea of essentially buffed items so the idea that like you can create a food

• 1:19:59

consumable and then you can potentially cook that food consumable in a piece of your home's

• 1:20:06

furniture like a stove or something and doing so will give it a timed period in which you

• 1:20:13

need to eat it to to get the benefits of that particular expanded buff but we don't want

• 1:20:19

to create an environment I feel where you're having to micromanage each of the resources

• 1:20:26

that are very vast in our game you know we have a hundred plus material system where

• 1:20:31

you're having to play whack-a-mole with managing those things it just doesn't it's not compelling

• 1:20:36

to me it's not meaningful I don't see the value in it it just becomes a yeah tedious

• 1:20:44

tour our next question is about world bosses and this is from cloning and they want to

• 1:20:49

know when it comes to world boss respawns especially legendary ones how will respond

• 1:20:55

response work for example will it be primetime respawning or random respawn times so generally

• 1:21:05

in my experiences when you have a fixed respond time you run into the potential situations

• 1:21:12

where the powerhouses of the server can keep a particular boss on lockdown and you don't

• 1:21:17

want to create that type of a situation and so one of the ways that we can help to alleviate

• 1:21:23

that is by having windows of respond times and we've all experienced this in the MMOs

• 1:21:28

that we've played where it's not necessarily known when exactly to to coordinate with your

• 1:21:35

large guild who needs to be online when right and this can give a little bit of a leg up

• 1:21:41

on the competitive advantage front for other guilds that might be more smaller knit or

• 1:21:46

more niche to organize quickly in response to the time window of a respawn that's one

• 1:21:52

aspect of it but in addition some of our bosses spawn off of a predicate and those predicates

• 1:22:01

can be met at any time so it might not be necessarily a respond timer or window for

• 1:22:06

some bosses it might be when the story arc kicks off or when another predicate in the

• 1:22:12

world occurs the spawn happens like an event those those might not adhere to standard respond

• 1:22:19

times all right and then this one is from frost01 about summoner the summoner archetype

• 1:22:27

it has been said that summoners summons will be an extension of our play will this look

• 1:22:32

like our point of view becoming the summon while an AI takes over playing our character

• 1:22:37

basically they don't want to kind of understand what the how the system will work I'm so sorry

• 1:22:44

I'm getting bombarded by the production team about meetings today and if I'm gonna make

• 1:22:49

them so I was just checking that as you were reading that question you're gonna give me

• 1:22:53

that one more time yeah it's been said that summoners summons will be an extension of

• 1:22:58

our play will this look like our point of view becoming the summon while an AI takes

• 1:23:03

over playing the character or how will this system work yeah no no um so two points there

• 1:23:09

when we say that summons are a reflection of our of our play we're talking about that

• 1:23:16

our class composition and design revolves around a holy trinity ideal the summons will

• 1:23:25

also adhere to that aspect so summoners as they grow in level and expertise will have

• 1:23:32

the ability to select which summon is appropriate for the particular situation that they're

• 1:23:38

trying to address those could be a tank oriented a support oriented or dps oriented summon

• 1:23:44

they'll have access to a multitude of them in addition the secondary question there that

• 1:23:50

I've heard is will we be able to become our summon we do have the concept of siege summons

• 1:23:57

being a thing with multiple summoners being required in order to to create that siege

• 1:24:03

summon in those situations your character becomes the summon so you don't have an AI

• 1:24:10

that takes over your previous character but instead the recipient of those additional

• 1:24:15

spell effects become the actual summon itself all right and then bliz bub wants to know

• 1:24:24

about alpha 2 scope I assume some features that are listed on the wiki as being in place

• 1:24:30

for alpha 2 may be added after alpha 2 begins what features off the top of your head are

• 1:24:35

being planned for the start of alpha 2 and what features are probably going to give are

• 1:24:40

going to go live after the start of alpha 2 that's a long I know it's all big question

• 1:24:50

so first I would say that when we talk about alpha 2's perspective it's really focused

• 1:24:57

around core systems and their ancillary counterparts when we talk about what those core systems

• 1:25:04

are it's the siege systems it's the guild war systems it's the node advancements it's

• 1:25:11

the story arcs it's the character class progression it's the augments it's our artisanship loops

• 1:25:18

and the gathering processing and crafting cycles it's home ownership it's vehicles and

• 1:25:26

mounts and you know any number of professions that exist there and then also a big chunk

• 1:25:33

of alpha 2 is obviously content the ability to ensure that the the hooks for these quest

• 1:25:40

hubs within the nodes the points of interest are stood up and reflective of the content

• 1:25:46

necessary to facilitate that those story arcs and commissions and buy orders that's really

• 1:25:53

kind of the MVP of what we're what we need to achieve in order to demonstrate the loops

• 1:26:00

collect feedback from those loops and the players who are play testing them and then

• 1:26:04

make iteration as necessary based off of the feedback we received that's alpha 2's perspective

• 1:26:10

now of course there are a number of ancillary systems that we also are developing as part

• 1:26:17

of alpha 2's purview that we want to have available to test as well however those aren't

• 1:26:22

necessary in order for us to begin testing and so alpha 2 is intended to be a very large

• 1:26:30

section of the game as well as a long testing period and our opportunity to trickle in additional

• 1:26:38

ancillary systems is something that we're going to be leveraging because we want to

• 1:26:44

get in and test as quickly as possible but also cognizant of the fact that it's a public

• 1:26:49

test period and that players are going to see what we're showcasing and it needs to

• 1:26:54

be on par with that public display so I hope that answers the question yeah it's a lot

• 1:27:02

I think you you gave it just of like what the core game play loops are going to be and

• 1:27:06

that is what's going to be at the start versus like some of the ancillary things yeah that

• 1:27:11

will patch in and of course patching even in changes to the core core loops as well

• 1:27:17

the next question is from liniker about the minimum viable product which a lot of people

• 1:27:22

call the MVP what is your stance in regards to focusing on delivering an MVP versus continuously

• 1:27:29

upgrading your tools and engine to deliver a better product with new tech even if that

• 1:27:34

results in delays or additional years of development like UE 5.2, UE 5.3 etc I'm like we actually

• 1:27:40

just went through this a couple years ago so we are willing to take whatever it makes

• 1:27:45

you know yeah just just so you guys are aware internally how we evaluate either new technology

• 1:27:54

integrations or updates on the engine you know our process for doing that going forward

• 1:28:02

is essentially that our technical teams especially our network team our ICS teams our gameplay

• 1:28:09

engineering teams they convene and weigh when our next update should be on the engine side

• 1:28:18

what new technologies might bring benefit overall my perspective on how we balance the

• 1:28:27

need for integration of new technology versus the versus the responsibility we have in a

• 1:28:38

timely manner to provide testing sessions that get us closer to the launch date that's

• 1:28:44

a delicate balance I would say generally our disposition is not to incorporate new technologies

• 1:28:52

that that yield some significant amount of delay on the development side we very much

• 1:29:00

take the perspective that we're capable of adjusting and or integrating those new technologies

• 1:29:06

post milestone post launch if necessary at some point we'll stop updating the Unreal

• 1:29:16

engine you know in development until launch that point hasn't come yet but of course the

• 1:29:23

larger the project grows and the more customized we have on the more custom we make the engine

• 1:29:29

for our back end needs and for you know whatever else merge conflicts can occur those merges

• 1:29:34

can become you know can become big and painful and the update process gets more painful so

• 1:29:41

so to answer your question shortly we have a team that kind of evaluates what direction

• 1:29:48

we need to take there and at the top of my mind is always let's not incorporate delays

• 1:29:53

as a result of leveraging new technologies yeah we do a risk assessment and we decide

• 1:29:59

what you do want to do what we don't what we're willing to move forward with there's

• 1:30:04

a lot more that goes into those decisions and so Chancellor wants to know about passive

• 1:30:09

skills does your choice of secondary archetype affect what passive skills you'll be able

• 1:30:13

to have available to you or are those locked in by your primary archetype that's a good

• 1:30:19

question it's something we've discussed actually in the past and we still haven't landed on

• 1:30:23

a conclusion yet for the passive abilities and whether or not there are new ones that

• 1:30:27

are introduced with the secondaries my inclination is that we will lean towards that direction

• 1:30:33

but it's really something that we're going to be testing as probably part of Alpha 2

• 1:30:38

and getting feedback on that all right and then flagging as a combatant is coming a question

• 1:30:48

from nice gaming wanting to know aside from contesting open world resources or dungeons

• 1:30:55

are incentives being considered when you flag for PvP such as you get more XP or you increase

• 1:31:02

your resource gathering yield etc the only incentive so first of all we want to provide

• 1:31:09

zero incentive for for murdering so there is no incentive to go corrupt there's no gameplay

• 1:31:16

system that touches that there's there's zero incentive for a player to go red it actually

• 1:31:21

makes you gives you negatives for doing that yes significant negatives very significant

• 1:31:26

downsides if we're talking about flagging becoming a combatant which is not pking but

• 1:31:32

just responding to an attack or starting to participate in an attack the incentive there

• 1:31:37

is that you lose less if you die so if you die while flagged not corrupt but while flagged

• 1:31:45

you will lose less experience on death excuse me you will accrue less experience dead on

• 1:31:50

death and the death debuffs will be less so to a degree we do incentivize players to fight

• 1:32:00

back or to participate in PvP through the flag system but not to PK not to go corrupt

• 1:32:06

but there are other systems for PvP that will give you benefits and rewards and things of

• 1:32:11

that sort but not just for flagging no no no so those we call our events right those

• 1:32:19

are essentially our PvP events those are opt-in right players can participate that if you

• 1:32:23

acquire a castle there's a lot of strength and power that comes from that if you win

• 1:32:27

a guild war if you win a node war if you succeed in attacking a caravan those are systems that

• 1:32:33

you can opt in there are no you know there are no death there are no death consequences

• 1:32:40

essentially for participating in opt-in systems like experience debt stuff like that but flagging

• 1:32:47

is its own bespoke system flagging is separate of the event-based PvP systems those are meant

• 1:32:53

to really facilitate kind of crimes of passion you know or or the situationally strategic

• 1:33:02

relevant things all right and then our next question is from tactical or is about tactical

• 1:33:09

gameplay from ace1234 and they want to know how relevant will cover and terrain layouts

• 1:33:14

be on gameplay and will environmental destruction interactions with these cover and will environmental

• 1:33:23

destruction interact with these cover mechanics example being using cover for protection or

• 1:33:29

hiding pushing enemies off cliffs and blowing up objects to use as makeshift cover so there's

• 1:33:38

not really the concept of destructible terrain or meshes for cover other than in specific

• 1:33:52

systems like castle sieges where I might be on a rampart or behind a wall and that could

• 1:33:57

be destroyed removing my cover but not like a you know Gears of War I or something where

• 1:34:03

I you know slide up to a piece of rock or the corner of a wall or something yeah hopefully

• 1:34:14

that makes the next one is from armored cell this is our final question about becoming

• 1:34:19

an avatar is it possible for a player character who has achieved the top spot in a particular

• 1:34:24

religion to become an avatar of a deity no not an avatar you become you become a very

• 1:34:32

prestigious member of the community in your node you have certain powers that are granted

• 1:34:38

to you during node events if you're the highest ranking member you get unique access to certain

• 1:34:44

vendor tables and you have some directionality over the organization or religions kind of

• 1:34:53

path for content of the other followers you know there's some benefits there but not you

• 1:35:00

don't become an avatar you don't you don't become a herald of the god and with that we

• 1:35:09

have come to the end of our our March update it was a lot we hope that you enjoyed that

• 1:35:16

and of course we want to remind you that next Friday which is April 7th I believe yes at

• 1:35:23

11 a.m. Pacific we will be doing a creative director community Q&A with Steven who will

• 1:35:29

be chatting with Chibi from the Golden Feather Richie sh and some Merg from Ashes Pathfinders

• 1:35:35

and we are very excited to answer some of the community's questions beyond that we would

• 1:35:41

like you to remind you to head on over to our forums and leave us feedback there is

• 1:35:45

a thread already up there for forums ashes of creation comm in regards to our carfen

• 1:35:50

preview that we showcased here so please give us your feedback your thoughts it is very

• 1:35:55

helpful for us to make sure that we're all on the same page and of course reminding that

• 1:36:00

flavors of fellerin our cosmetics that will be swapping over on April 12th so if you'd

• 1:36:06

like those head on over and snack them and of course we want to extend a massive thank

• 1:36:10

you to you all for joining us today we appreciate you taking time out of your day or some of

• 1:36:15

you are watching while you're at work we won't tell and of course to I'm II Scott and Jeremy

• 1:36:22

for joining us for our preview section of carfen and Steven for your time and making

• 1:36:28

it through this even though you're sick so sorry guys I promise I will not be sick hopefully

• 1:36:33

in the week when we do that that Q&A stuff with the yeah hopefully you're feeling better

• 1:36:37

before then and with that we will be wrapping it up we hope that you have you stay healthy

• 1:36:44

and safe and you have a wonderful month and we will catch you next month for another development

• 1:36:49

update remember that the vod for this will be up on Twitch we'll also have the the high

• 1:36:55

res vod of like the carfen preview over up on YouTube and then this full vod will be

• 1:37:00

over on YouTube and if you leave us a comment and you are a subscriber on the development

• 1:37:05

update video you could be spotlighted in next month's live stream where we'll answer your

• 1:37:11

question and of course follow us in all the places Twitter Facebook Instagram everywhere

• 1:37:15

we are constantly posting things almost daily so if you want to interact with us head on

• 1:37:20

over there and of course on the forums and discord we're always available as well so

• 1:37:25

please pop on over there and join our community and partake in all the fun and we will see

• 1:37:29

you next month.

• 1:37:30

Bye everyone.

• 00:00

Hello everybody and Steven's stomach. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. What were

• 00:23

you doing? I was trying to find the, I was trying to find the Twitch channels so I could

• 00:29

watch chat. Oh yeah, you gotta have chat up. I have all the chats. Internal, Discord, all

• 00:36

the social. Yes. Twitch. And by the way. I try my best. Before we even begin, I just

• 00:41

want to, just want to touch on the fact that I am coming to you from home. I unfortunately

• 00:51

got under the weather the other day. He's a little sick. Yes, and last night. You look

• 00:57

so cozy though. Well, let me say I don't feel cozy. But you look cozy. Very, very comfortable.

• 01:05

Well, welcome everybody. Salutations and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation March development

• 01:10

update. We hope that you are well and safe. Hopefully you are not sick like Steven is.

• 01:15

But we are still here. We're still gonna give you guys a great monthly update. For those

• 01:21

of you who, you know, maybe don't follow us very closely, you might not see all the little

• 01:24

things that we're doing all the time, but this is your little update for what we've

• 01:27

been working on. So just to remind you of what we're covering today, we'll be going

• 01:32

over some quick reminders. We have a little announcement. We'll be showing our carfen

• 01:37

preview which you got a little teaser of last month. And then we also have some character

• 01:44

art and some additional art update as well. And then studio update and Q&A. So we hope

• 01:50

that y'all are doing well. I'm excited. We just wrapped up one of our milestones, milestone

• 01:58

four for us internally. And for those of you who don't know, we kind of different sprints

• 02:02

that we run. And this was a big one for us. So it's very exciting. And we're excited to

• 02:07

start heading into our milestone five. I want to capture the little phoenixes. You got a

• 02:14

little phoenix on each side. I know. I put a little phoenix up on each of the sides.

• 02:20

Yeah, we had a, for these of you guys who don't know, so we follow an agile development

• 02:27

process where we operate under sprints and milestones and whatnot. And the end of our

• 02:31

milestone four was last week. And we tend to as a studio, obviously celebrate these

• 02:40

milestones that we hit. And last night, Margaret organized a very awesome evening at this really

• 02:50

cool bowling alley, brewery slash arcade. And it was really cool. The team just had

• 02:59

an opportunity to relax and get to enjoy each other's company in a non-professional setting.

• 03:08

And I thought that was cool. It was so cute. People hugging each other and just having

• 03:13

a good time and chatting about work. And not work, having fun chatting about work, not

• 03:19

stressful work. So I also just want to, before we get into things, I want to say, last night

• 03:25

I hadn't bowled in years, probably. And I guess age is really catching up with me. And

• 03:34

so I had this bowling ball and I was taking the first bowling swing of the night for myself.

• 03:42

And I go up there and I have the bowling ball in the hands and I'm about to throw it down

• 03:48

the thing. And my two fingers came out of the bowling ball just fine. But my thumb got

• 03:58

stuck as I was about to throw the ball. And I knew immediately what was going to happen.

• 04:05

And this was definitely, my face started to go from excited and happy to sheer terror.

• 04:12

And the ball just keeps going up into the air, stuck to my hand. And then finally at

• 04:17

the last possible second, when it's like at the highest point of the arc, the ball flies

• 04:22

off my hand straight up into the air onto the other bowling lane and lands with this

• 04:27

massive thud that the entire bowling alley was silent and all looking over at me. Like

• 04:35

what was happening? I was so embarrassed. That was so bad.

• 04:39

I won't name names, but one of our other developers, I don't know if he'll want me to share his

• 04:45

name. He can DM me if he's okay with it. They decided that their last round, they were going

• 04:51

to get the biggest, heaviest ball and throw it down the lane.

• 04:54

Oh no.

• 04:55

And similarly to you, also had a problem, but instead threw the ball backwards at the

• 05:04

people instead of down the lane.

• 05:06

Let's just say we need to stick to making games and not bowling. But regardless, we

• 05:14

had a really fun night. It was awesome. It's always great to be able to spend time with

• 05:18

each other and celebrate our successes. And I feel like that's what makes Ashes and Intrepid

• 05:25

a really great place to work is that we're all passionate. We love MMOs. We love what

• 05:30

we're doing. We love what we're building, but also we love doing it together. And that's

• 05:35

a super, super cool experience to have, I think, from a workplace environment standpoint.

• 05:39

Not a lot of companies foster that type of atmosphere. And I think we've done a really

• 05:43

good job at that.

• 05:44

Yeah. And maybe in the studio update segment, we'll talk a little bit about what was done

• 05:49

in Milestone 4 and what we're moving towards. But let's start with some of our things that

• 05:56

we just need to get out of the way right now, which is, first and foremost, we do have our

• 05:59

YouTube subscriber comment. If you don't know, if you subscribe to us over on YouTube and

• 06:05

you comment as a subscriber on our development update video, you could be chosen to be spotlighted.

• 06:13

And today's spotlight, I will switch over to that scene, is from Papa Smurf 6834. And

• 06:20

their question is, are we months away from the Alpha 2 or years plural? Any kind of indication

• 06:27

of the timetable would be greatly appreciated. And I think from my team, they would also

• 06:31

love for us to set that expectation because they deal with this question all the time

• 06:36

and so I'm kind of throwing it to you, Stephen.

• 06:39

Absolutely. So, you know, this is a common question desiring minds wish to know. We are

• 06:47

not years away from Alpha 2. But also, Alpha 2 is not right around the corner. You know,

• 06:55

as a public project, as a project that is visible from the outside during its development,

• 07:03

it's important that we execute well during these testing phases. And early on in the

• 07:10

project, you know, we made, I made some missteps in when we were anticipating coming to certain

• 07:19

testing periods. You know, obviously, I have learned a considerable amount over what it

• 07:24

takes to build these games over the last six years. And we made a promise to the community

• 07:30

that we would not give dates again in the future unless we were very certain that we

• 07:35

were going to hit those dates or at least be very close to hitting them. And so, you

• 07:39

know, as a result of that, we have our internal schedule, we have our internal milestones,

• 07:45

you know, we have our production roadmap that we operate from and the teams operate very

• 07:51

well from these expectations internally as well. But to answer that question, no, we're

• 07:56

not years away from Alpha 2. Internally, you know, we're going to be doing some testing

• 08:04

probably late this year and early next year as it relates to Alpha 2. And Alpha 2 is going

• 08:11

to be, you know, kind of a slow roll out of testing. So our desire is to get in as quickly

• 08:20

as possible, test some of the core systems and loops that we've integrated, you know,

• 08:26

since our Alpha 1 and get those vetted by player feedback and experience that we can

• 08:35

iterate upon essentially and get an opportunity. And that's going to be all public, right?

• 08:40

You guys know that Alpha 2 is a non-NDA environment testing. But prior to Alpha 2, we will test

• 08:48

some more spot oriented testing with some of the Alpha 1 testers and or PI leading up

• 08:55

to what would eventually become the Alpha 2 launch.

• 08:58

We'll probably start with PI so that we have a smaller group and then we'll add on to it

• 09:03

with our spot testing with Alpha 1 users. And then as we're ready, we'll bring in Alpha

• 09:08

2 users and then, you know, then we'll go more public with the big stuff.

• 09:13

Yeah. And, you know, I think all of us have experienced, so all of us have experienced

• 09:19

launches of games or testing platforms that we felt needed more time from a consumer,

• 09:27

from a player's perspective. And, you know, our approach, our philosophy is that essentially

• 09:35

the game will be ready when it's ready. We're not striving for perfection. We're striving

• 09:41

to achieve what the core loop is anticipated to be, what we've promised, what we're building

• 09:47

right now. That is the goal. And we understand just how important it is to succeed during

• 09:55

these testing periods and obviously for launch because MMOs traditionally really only get

• 10:01

one stab at that launch. And they can, you know, work to improve the game after launch

• 10:06

if there's hiccups and whatnot that we've experienced obviously. But really we want

• 10:10

to execute well on that initial launch. And what that means for us is we have to spend

• 10:15

that time to ensure that what we are building is sustainable, is extensible, is performant,

• 10:24

and represents what the core philosophy of gameplay loops are intending to be. And we're

• 10:29

building a massive project. I mean, this is probably the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG

• 10:36

to date at a launch frame, right? Obviously other products, other franchises have had

• 10:42

a decade plus to introduce and trickle out content. And one of the difficulties of launching

• 10:48

an MMO, a new MMO, is that you have to compete or try to compete and contend with all of

• 10:55

that content that's available because it creates a really strong social elasticity for the

• 10:59

players of those MMOs. And we want to be ensuring that our core gameplay loops are enjoyable,

• 11:11

are fulfilling, and have content that keeps players invested for a long time to come.

• 11:17

And because that's our goal and we have a lot of those systems to build, the team is

• 11:22

hard at work creating them in preparation for Alpha 2, which is probably going to be,

• 11:27

I mean, it is going to be one of our biggest test environments up until launch is Alpha

• 11:34

2. I mean, that is a major slice of the game.

• 11:37

I mean, like Stephen said, we only get one chance for first impressions. So it's very

• 11:43

important for us. If Alpha 1 hadn't had gone as well as it did, people might not be as

• 11:49

excited for Alpha 2. So thinking about the future of that and the longevity of our project

• 11:54

and making sure that people are going to love what we're creating as much as possible. And

• 11:59

as we've said many times, we're constantly going to take feedback. And there are decisions

• 12:04

that we've made on the design front that we want to come to fruition. And we know that

• 12:08

sometimes it's not what you guys are always interested in, but we were like, give us a

• 12:12

chance, play it, give us feedback, and we will alter things as we go forward. But I

• 12:16

think we're really excited, just as excited for you guys to join us and see what we're

• 12:22

creating. I mean, from a developer's perspective, there's nothing greater than seeing someone

• 12:27

enjoy the product that you've created. And I mean, obviously, we all want to enjoy it

• 12:32

too. I think that we've had some a lot of fun internally, which we might be sharing

• 12:37

some of that internal fun with you guys next month. But we've definitely, you know, trying

• 12:47

to make sure that we're creating something. And I think one of the things that people

• 12:52

might not realize is that MMOs take a really long time to make. That's why we're like,

• 12:57

this is a journey that you're going on with us. You're getting to see what development

• 13:01

is like. And I think that was the get go. Yeah, from the get go. And what's gonna be

• 13:05

fun is you're gonna get to see that journey. And then when we look back on this at launch,

• 13:09

we're gonna be like, wow, it's crazy seeing how, you know, even now looking at what was

• 13:15

the beginning of Ashes of Creation and what is now is crazy. The cool thing is that journey

• 13:22

is likely going to be expressed as even part of a documentary when we're done with this

• 13:26

thing, right? We record all of our meetings, all of our sessions, everything is kept on

• 13:31

a record. So when we're done launching this product, we have an opportunity to really

• 13:37

give an under the hood look at what the Herculean effort it's taken to get to where we are today

• 13:44

and where we will eventually be soon enough. So I want to bring up on that front is, you

• 13:48

know, the feedback that you guys give us. Roshan and Vaknar are amazing. They put together

• 13:53

these phenomenal reports. We record those meetings that we have with the designers and

• 13:58

developers when we go over that feedback. And it's really, I can't wait for you guys

• 14:03

to see like that side of it where you get to see like, hey, we really were taking in

• 14:07

your feedback. And most of the time in those meetings, it's like, yeah, we're already planning

• 14:10

on doing that and that and that. And some of the extra ideas we're like, oh, that's

• 14:14

cool. It's validation. Yeah, it's validating like what we're saying. And the issues that

• 14:18

you had and concerns that you guys have are also the issues and concerns we have. So it's

• 14:22

making sure that we're all on the same page. But I think it'll be cool for you to experience

• 14:25

that and see the other side of it. But obviously, we have to, you know, be careful what we share

• 14:32

prior to launch just because, like we said, we only have one chance to opportunity to

• 14:38

make an impression. Absolutely. Yeah. And just a last point on that topic. And then

• 14:43

I think we can move on. Yeah, we got to move on. Yeah, we got a whole show for you guys.

• 14:48

Exactly. Is that this journey is not for everyone. The patience it requires, the understanding,

• 14:56

the vision in looking and seeing where something is at now and where it will be in the future.

• 15:04

That is a very specific type of individual and requires unique patience, I think. You

• 15:13

know, our development, like every development, is never going to be perfect. And we're going

• 15:17

to have, you know, areas that slip and areas where we can improve. And hopefully, you know,

• 15:24

those of you who have watched for a very long time now, our development progress, you will

• 15:30

have seen those improvements from, you know, day one to today and to tomorrow. And it's

• 15:37

okay if following development is not for you. At some point. Turn it off. Go play other

• 15:44

games and come back when you're ready to play. And at some point, there is going to be an

• 15:49

opportunity now to just download the game and play. And that is going to be the experience

• 15:55

in and of itself. So. 100%. And with that, we're going to do a little announcement. Next

• 16:04

month, you're going to get two live streams. So on April 7th at 11am Pacific, our normal

• 16:11

time but just a little earlier, so literally next Friday, we will be doing a Creative Director

• 16:16

Community Q&A that will be with a few content creators. Chibi Bree from the Golden Feather

• 16:21

will be joining us. RichieSH, if you've watched any of their YouTube videos. And of course,

• 16:26

the Merg from Ashes Pathfinders. And we're really excited. They've accumulated some amazing

• 16:33

questions from their communities and from the community as a whole. We really wanted

• 16:37

to kind of give some love to the people who have been really supporting us and being part

• 16:42

of the community for so long. And we hope that you guys enjoy it. They got some good

• 16:46

questions. Stephen hasn't read them yet. No. Maybe we'll add some spicy ones in there.

• 16:52

I don't typically read questions prior. He doesn't like to. And my team's like, why won't

• 16:57

he read them? I was like, he doesn't want to. I don't want to overthink the response.

• 17:02

So I typically just, I want to answer off the cuff as much as I can. But I'm excited

• 17:09

about that. That's going to be a fun, I think, conversation to have.

• 17:12

Yeah. And I'm sure we'll do more of those in the future with other content creators.

• 17:16

Don't worry. Hold your pants. Some people are spamming their favorite creators. But

• 17:21

obviously, as we get closer to Alpha 2, there will be more opportunities for hyping things

• 17:28

up and getting more excited. This is just more so to answer some questions from the

• 17:31

community and make sure that we give some love to some folks. And then with that, we

• 17:36

also have just a reminder that the cosmetics will be swapping over for flavors of ephelerin.

• 17:43

And that will be April 12, 2023 at 11am Pacific. Reminder of that. And of course, for those

• 17:49

of you who are content creators, we do have a content creator program that you can check

• 17:53

out. You can go to our FAQ database and type in content creator and it'll show for you.

• 18:01

But we are currently just taking applications for that. I know a lot of content creators

• 18:05

have been asking when we're going to do invites. Those invites will probably be closer to when

• 18:09

we're getting to Alpha 2. So as we start ramping that up, you'll probably be like, what's happening?

• 18:14

But we will start sending invites closer to that timeframe. Right now, we're focused on

• 18:18

just application phase, which is a lot of folks. And we're very excited that so many

• 18:22

people are interested in joining us on this crazy adventure. And with that, I'm going

• 18:29

to hand it over to Stephen to give us a little preface before we show you a little walkthrough

• 18:34

of Carfin. So some of you might have seen maybe some leaks that I did in Margaret's

• 18:43

absence while she was at PAX. Oh, I saw. I know, I'm sorry. But this month we wanted

• 18:51

to showcase the Tower of Carfin from a lore perspective. And then in addition, we wanted

• 19:00

to showcase some systems, new systems that have been brought online from a narrative

• 19:05

perspective as well as it relates to our story arcs. So this is a deep dive in both the lore

• 19:12

of Carfin as well as the system of our story arcs and how they change the world around

• 19:20

you to reflect different chapters and or paths that story arcs can take based off of player

• 19:27

activity. You'll see the world change a little bit. I want to preface that, of course, this

• 19:33

is all a work in progress. You are taking a look at something that is still very much

• 19:38

in the alpha phase, both visually and in particular, you'll notice before the transition of the

• 19:48

zone, which happens about six minutes into this video, you'll see it in the non-active

• 19:54

state. And there's some lighting there that we're still fixing and some of the materials

• 19:59

and whatnot, but you're going to see it in the corrupt state after about the six minute

• 20:05

mark and it is pretty gnarly. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it is absolutely. It's just, yeah,

• 20:11

it's neat. It's different and more dynamic and I think that people are going to like

• 20:17

it. So, yes. So you guys will enjoy. We'll see you on the flip side.

• 20:32

Hello everyone and welcome to another stream from Vera. We have been building up, I think,

• 20:43

to this moment a little bit in the showcase for the Tower at Carvan. And I think there's

• 20:52

been some lore that we've released during last November's Extra Life livestream. We

• 21:00

played through a portion, I believe, of this tower. And now we have an opportunity to take

• 21:06

a look together, a little sneak peek, a small portion of this area and the lore behind it.

• 21:14

And we're also going to take a focus with some of the developers that'll be joining

• 21:19

us here in a second. I'll introduce them into the system of our story arcs and how that

• 21:25

system works in reflecting the changes that players elicit from the world of Vera. So

• 21:35

I want to introduce one of our senior designers, Scott. How are you doing, buddy?

• 21:44

Doing very good. Thank you for asking.

• 21:47

Welcome. Welcome to your design become reality.

• 21:52

Thank you.

• 21:55

This is Scott has been working on the narrative for this particular story arc that we're all

• 22:00

going to see in a second with his with his team, with whom we are joined by one of our

• 22:07

designers, Aimee. Aimee, how are you doing?

• 22:10

Hi, I'm doing good, Stephen.

• 22:13

Welcome. This is I think is this your first time on the stream?

• 22:17

It is. Yeah.

• 22:18

That is awesome. Aimee is one of our incredibly talented designers who is helping create the

• 22:25

narrative around Vera. And you guys may have played some of her quests in Alpha One, actually.

• 22:35

One in particular is the I believe it was the lost pages and the that spider quest.

• 22:41

Is that right? I mean, was it were those yours?

• 22:45

Those were my quests. Yeah. Thanks for remembering that.

• 22:48

I know they're great.

• 22:50

Yeah. Super excited to join today.

• 22:54

We're very excited to have you. And then in addition, we have what is soon becoming a

• 23:01

regular on the streams. Mr. Jeremy, one of our senior designers, how you doing, buddy?

• 23:08

I'm doing good. Happy to show off Scott's masterpiece creation here.

• 23:12

Yeah.

• 23:13

Laying it on thick.

• 23:16

I know. Wow.

• 23:18

Love it.

• 23:19

Pretty exciting.

• 23:20

It is exciting. It is exciting.

• 23:21

I mean, I've always said that nodes is the new hotness that we've been showing and story

• 23:26

arcs are the new hotness we've been hiding.

• 23:28

Yes. Agreed. Totally agree. So one of the first things that you guys are going to notice

• 23:35

in this environment is that we have this perspective of the of the tower. And I think, Scott, do

• 23:45

you want to talk a little bit about story arcs as a system?

• 23:49

Yeah, sure. So it's helpful, I think, to think about story arcs as kind of like a like a

• 23:56

prepackaged tabletop campaign. They contain like all of the NPCs and quests and monsters,

• 24:02

like all the things you need to make like a cool fantasy story. They're not procedurally

• 24:06

generated. We author them. We write all the dialog and we construct all the narrative

• 24:10

beats and everything like that. But they will enter the world dynamically depending on the

• 24:17

state that the world is currently in, how players have built up specific nodes, like

• 24:22

what races control various nodes. We have plans to include lots of different things

• 24:28

on top of that. But yeah, it's we don't have any quest hubs or anything like that in this

• 24:34

game because players build up all the cities. So we had to get a system that kind of looks

• 24:39

at what players are doing and can inject content into the world that makes sense for what they're

• 24:44

doing.

• 24:45

So we see it as like the the world decides in the state that it's in that we're going

• 24:49

to now play this module. We're going to because of the state of the nodes being in this way

• 24:55

and certain races have this one, we're going to play her substrata. We're going to do Blood

• 25:00

Still Do. We're going to do those modules and things.

• 25:04

So one of the things that I find most unique about our story arc system is that they're

• 25:09

intended to represent change, change within the story of what Vera is telling. And we

• 25:19

don't just do that through these new quest logs and and and dialogue, but also by literally

• 25:27

changing the environments and showing these active states that represent what is happening

• 25:34

and what choices the players have made previously in the different chapters, perhaps, of other

• 25:39

story arcs. Scott, I know that we have been working hard on this. Your team has been working

• 25:44

particularly hard and with engineering to kind of stand the system up over the last

• 25:49

several months. But you have the ability to push us into the next chapter manually, correct?

• 25:57

Yeah. Normally, this is a story that require us to have built up some of the nodes in the

• 26:05

area. Either you could just build up mirrorless directly to get access to where we're going,

• 26:10

or any of the nodes in the riverlands could have leveled up to a certain amount to have

• 26:16

basically enabled the story to spawn. But I'll just I'll just turn this on for us now

• 26:21

manually. Let's see. That's good. Get ready, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Welcome.

• 26:26

I push it takes a second, but it will kick on to the Tower of Cartham. And Houston. There

• 26:41

goes. Oh, things are getting red. The complete. What is that? The blood. Oh, the blood still

• 27:07

do. There it is. It's paying right now. Oh, my gosh. So yeah, when StorX come online,

• 27:16

they change a lot of the environment, they update what monsters are in the world. They

• 27:22

create quests NPCs, you can see Orin, he's not normally here. We've moved him for the

• 27:28

sake of this. And then yeah, new pathways can open up through the environment. Is the

• 27:36

bridge moving? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's nasty. What are the vines? It's you know,

• 27:49

it's corruption. There's so a very, a very terrible curse is sort of remaining here after

• 27:59

a sort of desperate spell was cast during the Harbinger apocalypse. You saw a bit of

• 28:07

that spell being replayed at the top of the tower there. But when the ancients were advancing

• 28:13

toward the Aelin capital, where Carfin is strategically positioned between where the

• 28:18

Harbinger Comet landed and the Aelin capital, the mages here and Carfin was known throughout

• 28:24

the Aelin Empire for its magical prowess. The head mage here did a very desperate and

• 28:31

dangerous spell to slow the ancients advance. And that was to buy the time for the for the

• 28:39

capital of Aela where they were building one of the divine gateways. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

• 28:44

I'm sort of opening people to get out. Right. They needed more time. They needed to make

• 28:49

space for them. They did something pretty terrible to do that. It bought them the time.

• 28:54

But as you can see, this once great city has suffered a great cost. This is I like the

• 29:01

little jump puzzle. This is awesome. This what is that here all the time? The story

• 29:10

are help this bridge form. This bridge might also appear if you've leveled up mirrorless

• 29:17

enough to create kind of this pathway. Otherwise, there's other ways to get there, but more

• 29:21

dangerous ways. Is that a what is that down there? That's a fiend golem. A fiend golem.

• 29:29

Fiend version. Oh, I like how the light just lit up to showcase the the body. That's crazy.

• 29:39

That's super cool. And they so now the the spawn tables around the city of Carfin have

• 29:50

changed as a result of the story arc progression. Right. So normally when the city is not in

• 29:58

its cursed state, you've got a whole subset of like like constructs and various other

• 30:04

like arcane things like you saw the animated numbers and stuff like that. While the fences.

• 30:09

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the curse is in effect. We've got these watchfuls, these seekers here

• 30:16

who they have their own sort of story and reason for being here while the curse is active.

• 30:21

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And they've got their summon watchfuls watching their backs as they're

• 30:34

doing what they're doing. Wow. The environment team did an unbelievable job here. They did

• 30:41

a killer job on this. Yeah, this looks so good. It's a blood curse. They really took

• 30:51

that personally. They said, oh, you want to see what corruption looks like? I know. Well,

• 30:57

what is talk to us a little bit about blood magic versus just normal corruption. So, yeah,

• 31:05

blood magic is a sort of illegal kind of magic and using it in any amounts creates a certain

• 31:12

amount of corruption in the caster. And that corruption can bleed over into environments

• 31:17

and things that they draw essence from in order to cast those spells. This was this

• 31:23

was a blood magic that obviously consumed a whole heck of a lot of it. She wasn't intending

• 31:30

for this kind of after effect. No, no. Yeah, the major cast this did not was not able to

• 31:39

understand the scope of the destruction that that would cause. But also in the final, you

• 31:45

know, the final days of, you know, ancient vera during the harbinger apocalypse, like

• 31:50

you didn't have a lot of time to research. There was not a whole lot of deliberation.

• 31:52

There wasn't a lot of a whole lot of like magical research and safety precautions that

• 31:58

they could take. So, yeah, it did its job, but, you know. Yeah, it seemed to like even

• 32:11

if it delayed a lot of the a lot of the progress they made towards the portal, it seemed like

• 32:17

they really created a lot of destruction along the way. Carpenter itself has a lot of history

• 32:24

built into the environment here, too. You'll see lots of statues and stuff around that

• 32:29

go into it. One of the five of the five main city states by primary city states of the

• 32:36

island people. And they would form into the island empire following the Great War of the

• 32:43

Undying with King Aetrax. Right now, so many people are just like, oh, my God, we're finally

• 32:51

getting lore. We could go all day on it if you want. We could, yeah. We don't want to

• 32:57

give it all away. Well, the story is kind of told over the course of four phases, four

• 33:05

chapters. Each chapter will update spawns, change the quest givers, change what quests

• 33:12

are available. And that's across the server. It's not like your individual progress phases

• 33:20

that is the actual quest themselves. You can progress kind of at your own pace. But as

• 33:24

long as it's within the window of that quest phase being active. I mean, who honestly has

• 33:29

this much blood to spare? This is crazy. This is. We're actually trying to figure out the

• 33:36

science of like if you took an entire city's worth of people, how many cups of blood would

• 33:40

you have? Probably not very many. Less than you think, but it wouldn't be as dramatic

• 33:47

if we were super realistic with it. It's magic. Yeah, it's magic. Blood is persistent and

• 33:54

eternal. Yeah. Unless we can do something about this curse. I don't know, Stephen, if

• 34:12

you stopped and talked to Ornn and pick up that quest or not. Oh, no, I did not. Oh,

• 34:17

that's okay. I think you still have all the quests that were in there before. Yeah, let

• 34:21

me grab it. What do I open my journal again? What is that? It's L. L. That's right. Yeah,

• 34:26

L to open your journal. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Yeah, you can see there's other

• 34:29

story arcs going on as well. The phase timers in there indicate how much real world time

• 34:35

is available to like do the quests in that phase. I see. And what quests you do or the

• 34:42

quests that you do, like it's not just a matter of completing the laundry list of things that

• 34:46

the NPC has you do, but you pick from a whole bunch of objectives, many of them optional.

• 34:51

Some of them, if not most of them hidden when you first undertake the quest. So, you know,

• 34:56

go dig up a guide or blaze your own trail or whatever. But depending on which objectives

• 35:00

you complete, those are the things that help the server aggregate what is going to happen

• 35:05

in later phases of the story arc. And that's like across all of the players participating

• 35:10

during that time frame, what objectives they decide to complete. That's what drives what

• 35:15

happens in later. Awesome. What quests are available, what NPCs are pulling ahead of

• 35:20

other NPCs in terms of their progress toward their goals. And how you complete your quest

• 35:26

matters. Yes. Yeah. With some objectives, you know, being exclusive of one another.

• 35:32

So helping one NPC will lock you out of helping a different NPC. So, yeah, it's we don't.

• 35:40

Oh, no. Wow. I'm just I'm just taking in the sheer beauty, but also like a kind of gross

• 35:48

beauty of this environment. It is so eerie. I think even the corrupted trees, you can

• 35:59

harvest them. Find some of them that you can harvest and chop them down. Oh, really? Yeah,

• 36:10

they're a little bit hard to spot, though. Well, also the I believe that as part of these

• 36:21

environments changing, you're also activating rare resource spawners that might only occur

• 36:28

during certain events. Yeah, that's correct. So, yeah, yeah. Like corrupted soul bloom.

• 36:35

And there was one that Kory had just put in. All those things are only available during

• 36:41

certain story arcs and every story arc has its kind of special things that you want to

• 36:45

try and take advantage of. And that one in your backyard, swing by and pick them up for

• 36:50

herbalism, for making certain potions. Sometimes you want to take advantage of the limited

• 36:56

time you have during the story arcs to get some of these rare resources for crafting

• 37:01

things, certain poisons and potions from these limited corrupted spirit blooms, right? Yep.

• 37:10

Sorry, I just disabled my HUD right now. I want to like this area is just too crazy.

• 37:18

Huge tower. It looks so good. Jeremy and Hal and Adam, I think. Who's all working on this?

• 37:31

Jeremy. Zach and Brandon. Everybody. Scott. Other Scott. Yeah. Not me. Tristan. Tristan's

• 37:39

entire team. Yeah, this is absolutely beautiful. And talk to me a little bit about the dungeon.

• 37:48

So the dungeon we're heading to right here, that's the Tower of Carthen. That is the mage

• 37:53

university that following the War of the Undying, the elves, that oh, these humans, there's

• 38:00

something to them. Let's gift them the gift of magic and how. Let's show them the advanced

• 38:08

stuff. You can see some of that story reflected here on these murals. Build them a university.

• 38:14

Hold on to stuff and we can teach them the way we want to have them. And the human said,

• 38:21

yeah, show us. I think we ran by the deans, the first deans of the statues back here.

• 38:29

Oh, yeah, we should look at this. I really love how some of the ornate detail in the

• 38:37

buildings have so much symbolism attached to them. It really makes it feel like there's

• 38:42

a kind of steep like if you go back to the. Yeah, that's right over here. Back to the

• 38:48

statues we ran past. Yeah. All the former headmaster. These are the former deans. Right.

• 38:56

So this one up front here, that's Tanfileris Wren. He's the elf that came over from the

• 39:03

elves and from the Pyrion elves at the time. And you can see he's kind of built the tower

• 39:14

for them. Started training the first students. Then one of the other towers is his best student,

• 39:23

Aristod. I should point out his statue in a bit here. So he was the first human dean

• 39:30

he's this one here. You can see him kind of with the book open. That was Aristod. Wow.

• 39:37

The first one after Tanfileris went back to the elves after a few decades. We've got

• 39:47

Dean over here is the woman that's that's Jenica. And the good and interesting thing

• 39:54

about her is that she never died. She was into teleportation and that was her her big

• 40:01

area of expertise. And she just never came back. Hint, hint, hook. Oh, I see what you

• 40:10

did. Yeah. Then we have one of Lamont's, Auron over here. That's a Daren, Daren Lamont. He

• 40:22

was a dean of the college. He looks like a wise guy. Auron's family is quite they're

• 40:32

quite central to the to the story here. There'll be lots of opportunities to learn lots of

• 40:37

them in this story arc, actually. That is awesome. The final one there's a Klon Zander.

• 40:43

He was all into alchemy. So that was his area of expertise that he really. Oh, yeah. So

• 40:49

if you see a lot of maybe some potions in the game with a Klon or or no Zander so and

• 40:56

so that that's the guy. What do we have here? Just a very normal looking door, probably

• 41:04

nothing terrible. I mean, this mural. Oh, the humans asking the pyre for help with magic.

• 41:13

The periods. Yeah. Yeah. The period. I got a teaching period teaching the ten killer

• 41:21

or the alien at that point. Yeah. And over here. Oh, the five moons, the towers, construction

• 41:31

and the five months phases of the moon, three months. The three phases or five phases. Yeah.

• 41:41

Perfect. Very cool. And we also have there's yeah, the symbology for the period. You notice

• 41:48

the doors. You have a lion head on one side representing humans and the griffin head on

• 41:53

the other representing the elves. We're the guys pulling the doors open. Just a couple

• 42:01

of guards. What is this sandal? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. That made me cough a storm. That

• 42:18

is hilarious. That is hilarious. I love it. All right. So what is our objective here?

• 42:25

What are we looking for inside right now? Now, this is just the entrance, the foyer

• 42:31

of the tower of the university. Yeah. So we're not going to obviously take you through everything.

• 42:39

A lot of it's still a work in progress. Always remember that this is a work in progress right

• 42:43

now. This is part of the Alpha two experience. You'll be able to explore, delve into this

• 42:49

dungeon. So what are we going to see in here? Even more corruption and more more blood for

• 43:00

sure. I like the bell. The gong is cool. Yeah, I guess it is a bell. Oh, my God. Wow. This

• 43:26

looks great. I love this interior. The lighting is so moody. Oh, my God. This is like the

• 43:36

supreme edge lord environment. Take a look around at this. Just over there to get our

• 43:42

loot. Even the gothic-esque lamp with the nasty like flesh environment. Oh, God. Oh,

• 43:55

we have some loot. Is this like a treasure chest? That's a treasure chest. Whoa. Or not.

• 44:04

Oh, no, no, no. Not like that. Nuke it from orbit. Nuke it from orbit. Oh, thank you.

• 44:11

Perfect. Where'd it go? Where did it go? Behind us now. Oh, come here. Oh, my God. This thing

• 44:22

is crazy. Look at it. These are just the entrance mobs? It's just the entrance, yeah. Oh, no.

• 44:34

Oh, no. This guy is nasty. Now, these tend to do some nasty things when they die, right?

• 44:45

I mean, this is basically like a... What is this? A hoarder? AKA mimic? No, I'm just kidding.

• 44:51

This looks... Baron hoarder. Get away from it. Get away. Run. Get back. Get back. Get

• 45:01

away. No. You're pulling it into the party. Oh, that is nasty. This is absolutely phenomenal.

• 45:17

Yeah, they did an incredible job on this. It just looks so good. Well, is there anything

• 45:25

else that you guys want to touch on from the story arc perspective? Oh, I guess there's

• 45:34

one thing people might be curious about. I mentioned how you could do what you needed

• 45:37

to do as long as the phase... You can do any quests available in that phase while that

• 45:42

phase is available. So what happens if you miss something, you go on vacation or whatever,

• 45:48

and you can't log in during the week to participate in the quests that are going on in the phase

• 45:52

of that story arc. For most story arcs, they do repeat. After they complete, they'll go

• 45:57

on a cool down and they will repeat again. You'll have another opportunity to get involved

• 46:00

with them the next time they come through. For our big major world spanning story arcs

• 46:08

that will tell your server's own story, those ones don't repeat. Those are one and done.

• 46:15

You can replay them. There's a different system for replaying previous phases for the big

• 46:21

main story arcs. However, decisions and objectives you make in those won't count toward your

• 46:27

server's... What's canonized for your server, which is our way of saying what decisions

• 46:33

they make for the objectives and stuff that you completed.

• 46:36

And all this goes to really kind of creating that experience of player agency being seen

• 46:47

through world building and actually changing the locations, the environment, the story,

• 46:53

and how it influences future arcs down that path for the world to kind of reflect. It

• 46:59

creates such a unique, I feel, environment between different servers and the histories

• 47:06

that they create. Exactly. I think Jeremy said it really well

• 47:11

earlier when we were trying to help figure out the right words to describe these very

• 47:15

complicated systems. In MMO, you have different philosophies on kind of storytelling. We're

• 47:24

going to more old school, like the world has a story and you're playing within the world

• 47:28

story. And in our case, you're helping to guide that by the decisions that you make

• 47:33

while doing your quests and the different players. If one goes one, if a bunch go one

• 47:38

way and a few go the other way, that kind of canonizes down that way. More recent MMOs

• 47:44

have just focused the story on the player and used instance and phasing to tell individual

• 47:50

stories at different times and at different durations. We're more old school saying the

• 47:59

world is evolving, you participate in how the world story is going. More on how you

• 48:06

owe and EverQuest and those games. Lineage. Yeah, lineage. Everybody is playing in the

• 48:15

same world and the state of that world is something that everybody is building together.

• 48:19

All great games. Absolutely. Well, go ahead, Amy. Sorry. I was going to say that one of

• 48:26

the major goals I feel like we have is to allow player decisions to have consequences

• 48:34

and to have meaningful results from the decisions that they make. So it seems like people can

• 48:42

really create their own stories. Absolutely. Phenomenal work, guys. Well, I want to thank

• 48:49

you three for joining me to help kind of give players a peek, a little peek under the hood

• 48:54

for the Tower of Carthen as I train your party. I apologize. And I cannot tell you how beautiful

• 49:01

and unbelievable this this area is. I mean, the artists are just are phenomenal. So killer,

• 49:08

killer job. So so fun. With that being said, we're going to go run back to the stream.

• 49:15

Super exciting stuff. And we will be back with you in just a moment. Thank you, guys.

• 49:35

Love seeing the reactions in chat whenever stuff started changing on the screen. I was

• 49:40

like, yes, we hope that you are as excited as we are for the dynamic questing system

• 49:47

and content and how it interacts with the nodes. Yeah. You know, this this particular

• 49:53

dungeon is a big one. It is a massive one. It is the largest in the Riverlands and it

• 50:01

is a major quest hub for Alpha 2. So this is you guys will probably be spending a lot

• 50:10

of time in this dungeon. You know, one of the key takeaways from the system, from the

• 50:16

system side of this with regards to story arcs, story arcs for something very early

• 50:22

on that we decided was necessary to facilitate how players interacted and changed the world.

• 50:31

Right. We have this context of a very world building kind of oriented game with the node

• 50:37

system. And then we needed something complimentary on the narrative side that can actually facilitate

• 50:43

the feeling from a player's perspective of my actions have consequences. My actions direct

• 50:49

the way that the server goes. And it had to be adaptive. But I noticed there were some

• 50:55

questions the questions and I apologize. Yeah, I've got some questions as well. Yeah, I apologize

• 51:00

again for being sick for this stream. But we had some I saw we had some questions about

• 51:06

like, you know, can I redo different chapters of the story arcs? And yeah, as that as that

• 51:12

chapter is present, you know, these these story arc chapters, they exist for potentially

• 51:18

days at a time so that people have an opportunity to kind of move from story arc to story arc,

• 51:23

do things across the world. We don't want a narrative system that is like highly dependent

• 51:29

on dailies or weeklies where you kind of feel this this need to log in to stay competitive

• 51:37

and and you know, it becomes a chore and not really indicative of the type of gameplay

• 51:44

I feel as MMO players we want to have. And so the story arc system is really meant to

• 51:49

provide these many cycles of interactive and compelling stories that are occurring simultaneously

• 51:57

around the world and direct the future story arcs that come next based off of what branch

• 52:05

is taken as an outcome of the particular story. So for example, in the Tower of Carfin, there

• 52:11

are two ways that this particular story arc can end that can end with a boss encounter

• 52:16

at the top of the tower, or it can end with a boss encounter that's at the at the ground

• 52:21

level in the supporting city around the tower. And when one of those branches gets gets decided

• 52:30

on or gets interacted with on the on the narrative side, that dictates future branches of the

• 52:40

story arcs that come thereafter. So players can can go back and if you know you do the

• 52:47

boss fight and your friends log in later and they want to go to the boss fight you can

• 52:51

participate in those in those in those chapters multiple times right you're not locked out

• 52:56

from doing it again. The with the major story arcs when the first when the first branches

• 53:02

decided that is a bit of a canonization for the server. And it creates a really interesting

• 53:07

linear storyline and history that each server experiences differently from another. And

• 53:16

that I feel is something that really has never been represented in MMOs before. One other

• 53:21

thing I want to say is that for those of you who've been following the Ashes development

• 53:26

since like you know 2017 and 2018, we've talked a lot about how corruption this red influence

• 53:34

and the use of you know this evil-esque type of magic influences the world around you.

• 53:42

And this is a great example in the city of Carthen where you can see how a variant of

• 53:49

that corruption blood magic variant has its own style guide, its own its own you know

• 53:57

indication of what is what is going on in this area. And we've you know we've we've

• 54:02

always been an alpha one you kind of saw a few of that a couple places for the corruption

• 54:06

influences back in 21. But really it's a large part of how these zones adapt and can change

• 54:14

around you know corruption is always trying to encroach on civilization. That's a larger

• 54:19

civilization builds. We did have some people asking questions regarding corruption and

• 54:25

I think it kind of ties in with what you're saying. Seven Six was asking will PVP be the

• 54:30

defining reason for corruption and you're kind of like saying that no it's not. No no

• 54:34

no no no no. So so so PVP is tied into corruption right to a degree your mortal coil as we call

• 54:43

it or what some might consider a soul from your character's perspective within the story

• 54:48

can be influenced and can be changed into a shape that's that's more in tune with corruption

• 54:55

and that's through doing PVP things you can accomplish that. But really when you think

• 54:59

about what corruption is corruption is a representation of the ancients magic the ancients hatred

• 55:07

the ancients desire to strike back at the creation of what their the gods who banished

• 55:12

them to the void have tried to accomplish on Vera. And so corruption is this influence

• 55:19

of the essence that permeates around locations in the world and tries to pervert what that

• 55:26

creation is. That really is what corruption is. You know what that disgusting foot this

• 55:34

is that's the one situation where I'd be okay with socks and sandals though. Just gonna

• 55:40

say just gonna put it out there. Sandals great the environment team by the way you know I

• 55:45

think they always sneak them in. Yes they do but I think everyone who's watching really

• 55:50

can give some hearts and chat. Our environment team is absolutely phenomenal and you're just

• 55:56

seeing kind of first passes on these environments with the alpha you know zones really this

• 56:03

is still not near where we intend and you guys watch improvement month after month and

• 56:10

in test environment after test environment. But the idea is to create a rich world that

• 56:17

is visually stunning and compelling and I think that the mood of this particular zone

• 56:25

is well communicated through what the environment artist team has been able to accomplish. And

• 56:31

how it changes with the dynamic quest stuff is pretty amazing. So yeah and not just our

• 56:37

environment team but also our tech art team as well. It did a phenomenal job in assisting

• 56:42

creating this area. All right I have a few more questions. I did want to mention because

• 56:49

some people were asking about the icon in the corner next to Steven's nameplate. That

• 56:55

little icon is actually his like secondary archetype that he hasn't unlocked and that

• 56:59

will change. Yes yeah so the idea there is to indicate through the party UI so that you

• 57:04

can see kind of secondary class choices that are made and that can be changed of course

• 57:10

players can can reselect different secondary archetypes through respecing but your primary

• 57:16

archetype remains the same and that gets unlocked when you do unlock that. Yeah and so people

• 57:22

were noticing that we had one of our folks with a sword over their shoulder and they

• 57:27

were wondering if that's a new idle animation and when that happens or if there's going

• 57:32

to be more stuff like that or if they can select which ones they have. So our animation

• 57:37

team Chris Myers and a few others part of the feedback that we got from the tank demonstration

• 57:46

when we were holding that two-handed sword was that people would like to see variants

• 57:51

of the types of non-combat idle stances that can be had with certain weapons and so we

• 57:57

decided to introduce you know a variant of that with having the shoulder rest on the

• 58:01

shoulder and that is something that we'll be exploring further to see kind of just how

• 58:08

much runway we can get out of custom and or selective idle stances. I know we want to

• 58:16

add a lot of you know flavor to the character and the persona that you that you have and

• 58:23

obviously idle stances can be a part of that display. All right and then Galadeon wants

• 58:29

to know will this environment change based on season as well? Yes so the vast majority

• 58:37

of environments in the game have some seasonal interaction. Some environments have four seasons

• 58:44

some environments have two and you know you can see that demonstrated you know mainly

• 58:52

through like snow and or but when it enters the corruption state outside of weather in

• 58:58

that corrupt state you will probably see a little bit less of the influence of the season

• 59:04

because really it's adopting that corruption which is in and of itself is kind of a season.

• 59:11

Something in the same in this area and then Lightfoo is wondering because Aimee had mentioned

• 59:17

oh yeah you can harvest the trees and things like that if there will be like special types

• 59:21

of trees and things of that sort for special crafted items. You know corruption isn't all

• 59:27

bad from a gameplay perspective from a mechanics perspective meaning that certain types of

• 59:34

resources will have a corrupt state and it will be necessary for you to acquire you know

• 59:40

like we have a spirit bloom which is a harvestable herbalism plant but in when a zone becomes

• 59:49

corrupt you can potentially yield corrupted spirit blooms and those are necessary components

• 59:56

of certain crafting recipes and so corruption also services the idea that as these zones

• 1:00:05

change and adapt to reflect you know the different statuses of corruption or seasons so do the

• 1:00:10

harvestables and that's that's an important part of the overall economy.

• 1:00:15

All right and then Fireoofly wants to know this is an open world dungeon right what prevents

• 1:00:24

others from just waiting until you're at the boss and then killing you and taking your

• 1:00:29

boss's loot and then related to that what prevents mega guilds from just owning an area

• 1:00:34

and preventing you from accessing or enjoying it. I did see a couple other people asking

• 1:00:37

this in different terminology but yeah.

• 1:00:40

So a couple things there first of all first thing is is we don't want in the majority

• 1:00:45

of cases we do not want to prevent another group from engaging potentially in PvP we

• 1:00:51

disincentivize it by creating safeguards within the flagging system that make that decision

• 1:00:58

very concerning for the people that might go corrupt right and if you're in the large enough

• 1:01:04

group of numbers I doubt you're going to experience that unless there's some rivalry between guilds

• 1:01:10

in which case like you know there's apparatuses like Guild Wars that are more opt-in you can

• 1:01:14

drop guild tag if you want but anyways competitive the competitive nature of this environment

• 1:01:19

is is a PvX element however in situations where we want to contain a particular type

• 1:01:29

of raid we will utilize instancing and that can protect certain engagements with certain

• 1:01:34

bosses but that's really more on the 20% of 20% of the scenarios will have instancing

• 1:01:45

protection like that around 80% of the content is open world where competition is healthy

• 1:01:51

competition is an instigator for soft player friction for potential cooperation for the

• 1:01:58

ability to yield alliances and the political you know theater that comes with it so that's

• 1:02:03

an intended part of the PvX design of Ashes that's a it's a core philosophical point.

• 1:02:08

All right and just to be clear that is not for everyone we are not trying to make a product

• 1:02:18

that appeals to every MMO gamer that's impossible and so we've been very upfront and forthright

• 1:02:26

with what we are trying to accomplish and what our core pillars of philosophical design

• 1:02:31

are and that's an okay thing and if if the thought of player competition of potential

• 1:02:38

threat and soft friction is not one that resonates with you there are plenty of games out there

• 1:02:46

that are not focused around those philosophies and that's entirely acceptable.

• 1:02:51

All right with that I'm going to move on to our art we have a lot of cool art to share

• 1:02:57

with you all the character and concept teams have been kicking some booty and the first

• 1:03:04

one here actually you saw these but I think being able to see them kind of in like a 3d

• 1:03:09

element here on their own these are the statues from Carfen that were being worked on and

• 1:03:15

you can just see I mean you saw how massive these things are but the detail and as Jeremy

• 1:03:20

I know was talking about the lore behind these different folks except I don't think they

• 1:03:25

had the the ones that were holding the chain but they didn't have the lore for that but

• 1:03:30

I'm sure they'll they'll write something up if they haven't already but yeah they've gone

• 1:03:36

into a lot of detail for these people and like what they're wearing and what they're

• 1:03:40

holding and the symbolization of that.

• 1:03:42

Yeah these are great.

• 1:03:45

Oh go ahead.

• 1:03:47

I was just gonna say I love the massiveness that it really adds to the environment to

• 1:03:53

have these large character statues and they are as you guys heard from a lore perspective

• 1:03:58

they have great relevancy to the story of what came before your people so it's cool

• 1:04:05

to kind of dig into that and it'll be weaved throughout different narratives as well.

• 1:04:10

And then you did see in a previous live stream a few of the Carfen weapons and these are

• 1:04:14

just some more that are being worked on very exciting so I'm sure folks will enjoy getting

• 1:04:21

that loot I know there was questions about why the hoarder didn't have loot there will

• 1:04:24

be loot my friends.

• 1:04:28

Remember that remember everything you guys see you know is not going to be fully comprehensive

• 1:04:35

of what we would expect in a finished MMO product you're getting snippets of very specific

• 1:04:42

demonstrations and this one was about the area of Carfen and about the story arc system

• 1:04:49

so you know we're very still in development very much so in development and because of

• 1:04:55

that you know we're aware of what's outstanding of what we want to show that doesn't mean

• 1:05:01

that we're not cognizant of that fact you guys are seeing it we know it exists and we

• 1:05:06

have things that we're still working on and you know that's acceptable.

• 1:05:10

Of course and I like Alex Xavier's they're like they're a baby hoarder they haven't found

• 1:05:16

stuff to eat yet.

• 1:05:17

Yeah a little baby hoarder.

• 1:05:20

It is a small one I'm sure there's gonna be bigger ones and then of course we have like

• 1:05:27

you saw the little pustulas in the world creepy gross stuff you can kind of see the concept

• 1:05:33

of those we have some costumes this is the autumn collar you know they're trying to get

• 1:05:41

this in for some NPCs that they're working on.

• 1:05:44

Looks great.

• 1:05:46

And then also the giant slayer.

• 1:05:50

I love it that looks like a very painful armor to fight against.

• 1:05:58

Well I mean there might be a reason why we need the giant slayer armor it's called giant

• 1:06:03

slayer for a reason and then we've also got the alpine baghorn which is awesome so cool

• 1:06:14

like oh he's cool it's so fluffy.

• 1:06:21

Next up we have shown some of our race additions as we've gone forward and adjusted things

• 1:06:29

and now we have another update of a couple of them so we know we got a lot of feedback

• 1:06:34

on our dwarf friends and now you're getting to see a little bit more of the female dwarf

• 1:06:40

here her mutton chops I love them a little bit more stout.

• 1:06:54

Looks great.

• 1:06:57

And if you watched our character creator or if you haven't watched our character creator

• 1:07:01

stream I would recommend going to our YouTube channel and checking it out you can you know

• 1:07:07

change the level of wrinkles on them as well so you could be more older looking if you'd

• 1:07:12

like to be or younger and more useful.

• 1:07:15

She's got some intense crow feet going on there.

• 1:07:19

All right and next up is the veloun here to judge us she's a very judgy look on her face.

• 1:07:33

I mean she could just be very discerning.

• 1:07:37

In that one shot she's like.

• 1:07:44

Love these guys they look great.

• 1:07:46

Yeah and you're I mean we've talked about their kind of the relation to the gin and

• 1:07:53

you're gonna get to see a little bit of that today so stick around and it's pretty sick

• 1:07:59

looking so.

• 1:08:03

That's the female and then we also have the male.

• 1:08:12

Looks good and I know we showed in the past I mean these are the models but we showed

• 1:08:16

in the past the.

• 1:08:18

Concepts.

• 1:08:19

Concepts so like you can see how one-to-one these concepts are to the model it's great

• 1:08:24

artists do such a great job.

• 1:08:26

Our artists I mean we were getting some hearts in the chat not only our environment artists

• 1:08:31

but like our character artists it's just bonkers.

• 1:08:35

And just so you guys know Intrepid isn't entirely independent meaning nothing that you're seeing

• 1:08:43

here is outsourced comes from another studio this is all our internal art teams so it was

• 1:08:51

very important to us that when defining the look and the visuals of the world that we

• 1:08:57

create that internally and our our teams are just are phenomenal.

• 1:09:03

Yeah thank you guys for being awesome.

• 1:09:06

Now the gin version.

• 1:09:10

A little little teaser.

• 1:09:13

Oh that's cool it's got some of the some of the the darkness around the eyes got the

• 1:09:23

emissives on the forehead and on the skin too like the tattoos very cool.

• 1:09:33

Yeah.

• 1:09:35

Very nice.

• 1:09:39

Good stuff.

• 1:09:40

I think that gets us all of all of those so hopefully you guys like a little like a little

• 1:09:48

update and then we're gonna go to our studio update and we're I didn't forget this time

• 1:09:54

you guys so I'll pass it on to you Stephen if you want to talk a little bit about maybe

• 1:09:59

what was accomplished in M4 what we're moving towards in M5 and maybe any other studio information

• 1:10:05

you think we should share with our folks.

• 1:10:08

Yeah you know for us.

• 1:10:13

Excuse me I'm sorry.

• 1:10:19

You're okay he's a little sick guys.

• 1:10:22

I apologize guys I didn't you know I haven't missed in a stream in ever since we started

• 1:10:28

doing them and even though I'm I'm literally dying right now.

• 1:10:37

So yeah M4 for us was a was a big milestone we hit some some some core some core objectives

• 1:10:48

both around design and engineering our 5.11 update which was you know a little bit a little

• 1:10:54

bit larger than we had anticipated but you know we took those punches you know the the

• 1:11:03

art teams the tech art teams have been doing a lot of optimization passes and has found

• 1:11:10

a lot of gains on that front we were dealing with a little bit of a DX issue which we got

• 1:11:15

some clarity on.

• 1:11:17

Also we've been fine-tuning a little bit of our architecture a bit more around some

• 1:11:21

of the gameplay systems and where things can share there's a lot of work done there you

• 1:11:28

know a lot of the definitions further further definitions around expanded scope of our of

• 1:11:34

our building types and architectures within the node some of the tools have been some

• 1:11:41

getting revamped there's been a lot of content progress that's made from the narrative teams

• 1:11:46

win with lore side that's been doing a lot of work and then you know of course on on

• 1:11:52

the asset creation side our character teams our animation teams the combat teams have

• 1:11:59

been doing a lot of work and in getting some of the expanded archetype development progressed

• 1:12:06

you guys are going to be seeing the mage next month and hopefully the Cyclops the month

• 1:12:10

thereafter talking a little bit about raids and whatnot so a lot of a lot of stuff a lot

• 1:12:17

of progress we you know just to give you guys an idea as we continue in production sometimes

• 1:12:24

we try different things from a production process perspective we introduced some different

• 1:12:32

approaches with the regards to strike teams and how we facilitate and do cross-departmental

• 1:12:37

collaboration with our strike team formats saw a lot of success in m4 out of those a

• 1:12:43

lot of good stuff there we have some great pickups and hires that have been facilitated

• 1:12:49

over the course of the last few months and then in addition which is kind of where I

• 1:12:54

think I got sick from GDC went to GDC those who don't know the game development conference

• 1:13:00

and San Francisco had a lot of great meetings there listened to a lot of great panels got

• 1:13:06

a little mobbed by some I spent a little bit of time on the expo floor the moment I walked

• 1:13:12

into that expo floor there's about 40 people that surrounded me in a circle of signing

• 1:13:17

some GDC badges and talking a little bit about acid crazier that was kind of cool that was

• 1:13:23

fun but you know we had we've had a really good m4 so it was very very cool and yeah

• 1:13:31

you know we're continuing to hire we have some goals this year that we want to achieve

• 1:13:34

and and you know it's a turbulent time in the industry I view Intrepid as kind of a

• 1:13:44

beacon project amidst the turmoil that we're seeing so you know those of you out there

• 1:13:50

who are who are impacted and or you know someone who's impacted send them our way we do get

• 1:13:56

a lot of applications each month you know I think we get I think our last report for

• 1:14:01

q1 of or the q1 report for this year we had probably about 2500 or 3000 applicants and

• 1:14:10

we hired of those I think like seven or eight I'm not sure so you know we're really selective

• 1:14:16

in the people we bring on board but you know our focus is to grow the studio considerably

• 1:14:22

this year so yeah and the way that I mean we are a little picky but it just goes to

• 1:14:28

show like yesterday when we were hanging out with everybody in a group you love everyone

• 1:14:34

you work with whenever you build that culture and ensure that the people that you're pulling

• 1:14:38

on board are all you know hard-working people who care and love love games and are passionate

• 1:14:45

about it and you can just see that in the work see that in the relationships that we

• 1:14:49

have built and it really is you know it's cliche I think a lot of times when people

• 1:14:53

say oh you're building a family but like I really think we are and there's a lot more

• 1:14:57

love and care because it's you know we're people first and then we are you know making

• 1:15:02

games secondary you know absolutely yeah all right anything else you want to mention on

• 1:15:08

the studio update side I don't think so unless I'm missing something all right let's move

• 1:15:12

to the Q&A and then we will wrap this bad boy up on the QA Q&A front if you don't know

• 1:15:20

we always grab questions from the forums and Vaknar is amazing he goes through and answers

• 1:15:27

every one of your questions so if you asked a repeated question because we get a lot of

• 1:15:32

those we usually just give you guys those answers in the thread versus obviously putting

• 1:15:36

them on the stream here because we don't want to keep repeating ourselves too much and real

• 1:15:42

quick just for those of you who were watching the stream and you know under understandably

• 1:15:47

the quality of this video via the stream is not going to be as high as our 4k video which

• 1:15:52

we'll be uploading later today of this so you guys can see it in all its awe and glory

• 1:16:00

yeah we'll have that video up today and then we'll also have we already have a forum thread

• 1:16:06

up so if you'd like to give us feedback on that video or feedback on just what you saw

• 1:16:11

today yes feel free to head over to that that thread over on our forums forums.ashersofcreation.com

• 1:16:17

and let me help kind of contextualize the type of feedback that we're looking for from

• 1:16:21

this particular demonstration. Feedback one on the environments and what you're seeing

• 1:16:28

the mood setting the lighting the the size you know the idea of change adaptive dynamic

• 1:16:37

change that's an important one what do you like about that what are some of concerns

• 1:16:41

that you might have about that what are things that you feel we should look out for there

• 1:16:45

the second is going to be around the system of the story arcs and how they interface with

• 1:16:51

the world and sorry and and how do you feel that that story arc is going to interface

• 1:17:00

on the narrative side and on the world building side as well what are some concerns you have

• 1:17:06

there what are things that you saw that other games did well that you want to see as available

• 1:17:10

there that's it those are important points for feedback obviously the whole purpose of

• 1:17:14

our open development is to garner that feedback so that we don't end up on day one of launch

• 1:17:18

with with a game that you know people didn't ask for and don't you know want so this is

• 1:17:23

our opportunity to pulse check hey is our direction correct is this resonating with

• 1:17:28

people are these the types of ideas that you want to see in an MMORPG and that's how that's

• 1:17:34

how we value your guys's contribution during this journey yeah and I'm sure Vackner is

• 1:17:41

frantically updating that that thread now with those questions for context but we'll

• 1:17:46

get into the questions and this first one is from cast I and they would like to know

• 1:17:50

about mounts will mounts always be animals or will we have anime or inanimate objects

• 1:17:56

like magic carpets and magic brooms too I'm sorry can you repeat that one more time yeah

• 1:18:04

no problem will mounts always be animals or will we have inanimate objects like magic

• 1:18:10

carpets and magic brooms mounts are generally animals in ashes I'm not going to rule out

• 1:18:17

there's not an opportunity in the future to have and we might have in the past I'm not

• 1:18:21

sure I would have to double check but for the most part they're animals and if there

• 1:18:26

are non-animal type mounts then those would be very bespoke and unique yeah we have more

• 1:18:33

caravan oriented things one thing like that yeah and one thing that we would do that we

• 1:18:38

wouldn't do is is move into the steampunk type territory I you know it's one of the

• 1:18:46

designers when we were going through the cosmetics and we were designing like sets and they had

• 1:18:49

like this idea for kind of because we do have like arcane like engineering magic but they

• 1:18:54

wanted it was getting down the steam I was like I already know Steven's gonna tell me

• 1:18:57

no so you know yeah I mean for me I'm a very high it's not to say that people can't do

• 1:19:04

steampunk well I've enjoyed some steampunk stuff but I'm a very high fantasy oriented

• 1:19:11

type of storyteller and the inspiration for ashes obviously comes from my Pathfinder campaigns

• 1:19:17

that I ran long ago and those were always set in high fantasy world so I just it just

• 1:19:21

it just compromises what I believe is the perspective of the storytelling and the environment

• 1:19:25

yeah I mean we have we have built a brand and we're sticking to it and of course our

• 1:19:31

next question here is from digital daydream which is about gatherables well items in your

• 1:19:36

inventory expire or degrade such as meats fish berries or even crafted food and if so

• 1:19:42

will there be a way to mitigate this generally the answer is no they will not degrade we

• 1:19:51

do have the idea of essentially buffed items so the idea that like you can create a food

• 1:19:59

consumable and then you can potentially cook that food consumable in a piece of your home's

• 1:20:06

furniture like a stove or something and doing so will give it a timed period in which you

• 1:20:13

need to eat it to to get the benefits of that particular expanded buff but we don't want

• 1:20:19

to create an environment I feel where you're having to micromanage each of the resources

• 1:20:26

that are very vast in our game you know we have a hundred plus material system where

• 1:20:31

you're having to play whack-a-mole with managing those things it just doesn't it's not compelling

• 1:20:36

to me it's not meaningful I don't see the value in it it just becomes a yeah tedious

• 1:20:44

tour our next question is about world bosses and this is from cloning and they want to

• 1:20:49

know when it comes to world boss respawns especially legendary ones how will respond

• 1:20:55

response work for example will it be primetime respawning or random respawn times so generally

• 1:21:05

in my experiences when you have a fixed respond time you run into the potential situations

• 1:21:12

where the powerhouses of the server can keep a particular boss on lockdown and you don't

• 1:21:17

want to create that type of a situation and so one of the ways that we can help to alleviate

• 1:21:23

that is by having windows of respond times and we've all experienced this in the MMOs

• 1:21:28

that we've played where it's not necessarily known when exactly to to coordinate with your

• 1:21:35

large guild who needs to be online when right and this can give a little bit of a leg up

• 1:21:41

on the competitive advantage front for other guilds that might be more smaller knit or

• 1:21:46

more niche to organize quickly in response to the time window of a respawn that's one

• 1:21:52

aspect of it but in addition some of our bosses spawn off of a predicate and those predicates

• 1:22:01

can be met at any time so it might not be necessarily a respond timer or window for

• 1:22:06

some bosses it might be when the story arc kicks off or when another predicate in the

• 1:22:12

world occurs the spawn happens like an event those those might not adhere to standard respond

• 1:22:19

times all right and then this one is from frost01 about summoner the summoner archetype

• 1:22:27

it has been said that summoners summons will be an extension of our play will this look

• 1:22:32

like our point of view becoming the summon while an AI takes over playing our character

• 1:22:37

basically they don't want to kind of understand what the how the system will work I'm so sorry

• 1:22:44

I'm getting bombarded by the production team about meetings today and if I'm gonna make

• 1:22:49

them so I was just checking that as you were reading that question you're gonna give me

• 1:22:53

that one more time yeah it's been said that summoners summons will be an extension of

• 1:22:58

our play will this look like our point of view becoming the summon while an AI takes

• 1:23:03

over playing the character or how will this system work yeah no no um so two points there

• 1:23:09

when we say that summons are a reflection of our of our play we're talking about that

• 1:23:16

our class composition and design revolves around a holy trinity ideal the summons will

• 1:23:25

also adhere to that aspect so summoners as they grow in level and expertise will have

• 1:23:32

the ability to select which summon is appropriate for the particular situation that they're

• 1:23:38

trying to address those could be a tank oriented a support oriented or dps oriented summon

• 1:23:44

they'll have access to a multitude of them in addition the secondary question there that

• 1:23:50

I've heard is will we be able to become our summon we do have the concept of siege summons

• 1:23:57

being a thing with multiple summoners being required in order to to create that siege

• 1:24:03

summon in those situations your character becomes the summon so you don't have an AI

• 1:24:10

that takes over your previous character but instead the recipient of those additional

• 1:24:15

spell effects become the actual summon itself all right and then bliz bub wants to know

• 1:24:24

about alpha 2 scope I assume some features that are listed on the wiki as being in place

• 1:24:30

for alpha 2 may be added after alpha 2 begins what features off the top of your head are

• 1:24:35

being planned for the start of alpha 2 and what features are probably going to give are

• 1:24:40

going to go live after the start of alpha 2 that's a long I know it's all big question

• 1:24:50

so first I would say that when we talk about alpha 2's perspective it's really focused

• 1:24:57

around core systems and their ancillary counterparts when we talk about what those core systems

• 1:25:04

are it's the siege systems it's the guild war systems it's the node advancements it's

• 1:25:11

the story arcs it's the character class progression it's the augments it's our artisanship loops

• 1:25:18

and the gathering processing and crafting cycles it's home ownership it's vehicles and

• 1:25:26

mounts and you know any number of professions that exist there and then also a big chunk

• 1:25:33

of alpha 2 is obviously content the ability to ensure that the the hooks for these quest

• 1:25:40

hubs within the nodes the points of interest are stood up and reflective of the content

• 1:25:46

necessary to facilitate that those story arcs and commissions and buy orders that's really

• 1:25:53

kind of the MVP of what we're what we need to achieve in order to demonstrate the loops

• 1:26:00

collect feedback from those loops and the players who are play testing them and then

• 1:26:04

make iteration as necessary based off of the feedback we received that's alpha 2's perspective

• 1:26:10

now of course there are a number of ancillary systems that we also are developing as part

• 1:26:17

of alpha 2's purview that we want to have available to test as well however those aren't

• 1:26:22

necessary in order for us to begin testing and so alpha 2 is intended to be a very large

• 1:26:30

section of the game as well as a long testing period and our opportunity to trickle in additional

• 1:26:38

ancillary systems is something that we're going to be leveraging because we want to

• 1:26:44

get in and test as quickly as possible but also cognizant of the fact that it's a public

• 1:26:49

test period and that players are going to see what we're showcasing and it needs to

• 1:26:54

be on par with that public display so I hope that answers the question yeah it's a lot

• 1:27:02

I think you you gave it just of like what the core game play loops are going to be and

• 1:27:06

that is what's going to be at the start versus like some of the ancillary things yeah that

• 1:27:11

will patch in and of course patching even in changes to the core core loops as well

• 1:27:17

the next question is from liniker about the minimum viable product which a lot of people

• 1:27:22

call the MVP what is your stance in regards to focusing on delivering an MVP versus continuously

• 1:27:29

upgrading your tools and engine to deliver a better product with new tech even if that

• 1:27:34

results in delays or additional years of development like UE 5.2, UE 5.3 etc I'm like we actually

• 1:27:40

just went through this a couple years ago so we are willing to take whatever it makes

• 1:27:45

you know yeah just just so you guys are aware internally how we evaluate either new technology

• 1:27:54

integrations or updates on the engine you know our process for doing that going forward

• 1:28:02

is essentially that our technical teams especially our network team our ICS teams our gameplay

• 1:28:09

engineering teams they convene and weigh when our next update should be on the engine side

• 1:28:18

what new technologies might bring benefit overall my perspective on how we balance the

• 1:28:27

need for integration of new technology versus the versus the responsibility we have in a

• 1:28:38

timely manner to provide testing sessions that get us closer to the launch date that's

• 1:28:44

a delicate balance I would say generally our disposition is not to incorporate new technologies

• 1:28:52

that that yield some significant amount of delay on the development side we very much

• 1:29:00

take the perspective that we're capable of adjusting and or integrating those new technologies

• 1:29:06

post milestone post launch if necessary at some point we'll stop updating the Unreal

• 1:29:16

engine you know in development until launch that point hasn't come yet but of course the

• 1:29:23

larger the project grows and the more customized we have on the more custom we make the engine

• 1:29:29

for our back end needs and for you know whatever else merge conflicts can occur those merges

• 1:29:34

can become you know can become big and painful and the update process gets more painful so

• 1:29:41

so to answer your question shortly we have a team that kind of evaluates what direction

• 1:29:48

we need to take there and at the top of my mind is always let's not incorporate delays

• 1:29:53

as a result of leveraging new technologies yeah we do a risk assessment and we decide

• 1:29:59

what you do want to do what we don't what we're willing to move forward with there's

• 1:30:04

a lot more that goes into those decisions and so Chancellor wants to know about passive

• 1:30:09

skills does your choice of secondary archetype affect what passive skills you'll be able

• 1:30:13

to have available to you or are those locked in by your primary archetype that's a good

• 1:30:19

question it's something we've discussed actually in the past and we still haven't landed on

• 1:30:23

a conclusion yet for the passive abilities and whether or not there are new ones that

• 1:30:27

are introduced with the secondaries my inclination is that we will lean towards that direction

• 1:30:33

but it's really something that we're going to be testing as probably part of Alpha 2

• 1:30:38

and getting feedback on that all right and then flagging as a combatant is coming a question

• 1:30:48

from nice gaming wanting to know aside from contesting open world resources or dungeons

• 1:30:55

are incentives being considered when you flag for PvP such as you get more XP or you increase

• 1:31:02

your resource gathering yield etc the only incentive so first of all we want to provide

• 1:31:09

zero incentive for for murdering so there is no incentive to go corrupt there's no gameplay

• 1:31:16

system that touches that there's there's zero incentive for a player to go red it actually

• 1:31:21

makes you gives you negatives for doing that yes significant negatives very significant

• 1:31:26

downsides if we're talking about flagging becoming a combatant which is not pking but

• 1:31:32

just responding to an attack or starting to participate in an attack the incentive there

• 1:31:37

is that you lose less if you die so if you die while flagged not corrupt but while flagged

• 1:31:45

you will lose less experience on death excuse me you will accrue less experience dead on

• 1:31:50

death and the death debuffs will be less so to a degree we do incentivize players to fight

• 1:32:00

back or to participate in PvP through the flag system but not to PK not to go corrupt

• 1:32:06

but there are other systems for PvP that will give you benefits and rewards and things of

• 1:32:11

that sort but not just for flagging no no no so those we call our events right those

• 1:32:19

are essentially our PvP events those are opt-in right players can participate that if you

• 1:32:23

acquire a castle there's a lot of strength and power that comes from that if you win

• 1:32:27

a guild war if you win a node war if you succeed in attacking a caravan those are systems that

• 1:32:33

you can opt in there are no you know there are no death there are no death consequences

• 1:32:40

essentially for participating in opt-in systems like experience debt stuff like that but flagging

• 1:32:47

is its own bespoke system flagging is separate of the event-based PvP systems those are meant

• 1:32:53

to really facilitate kind of crimes of passion you know or or the situationally strategic

• 1:33:02

relevant things all right and then our next question is from tactical or is about tactical

• 1:33:09

gameplay from ace1234 and they want to know how relevant will cover and terrain layouts

• 1:33:14

be on gameplay and will environmental destruction interactions with these cover and will environmental

• 1:33:23

destruction interact with these cover mechanics example being using cover for protection or

• 1:33:29

hiding pushing enemies off cliffs and blowing up objects to use as makeshift cover so there's

• 1:33:38

not really the concept of destructible terrain or meshes for cover other than in specific

• 1:33:52

systems like castle sieges where I might be on a rampart or behind a wall and that could

• 1:33:57

be destroyed removing my cover but not like a you know Gears of War I or something where

• 1:34:03

I you know slide up to a piece of rock or the corner of a wall or something yeah hopefully

• 1:34:14

that makes the next one is from armored cell this is our final question about becoming

• 1:34:19

an avatar is it possible for a player character who has achieved the top spot in a particular

• 1:34:24

religion to become an avatar of a deity no not an avatar you become you become a very

• 1:34:32

prestigious member of the community in your node you have certain powers that are granted

• 1:34:38

to you during node events if you're the highest ranking member you get unique access to certain

• 1:34:44

vendor tables and you have some directionality over the organization or religions kind of

• 1:34:53

path for content of the other followers you know there's some benefits there but not you

• 1:35:00

don't become an avatar you don't you don't become a herald of the god and with that we

• 1:35:09

have come to the end of our our March update it was a lot we hope that you enjoyed that

• 1:35:16

and of course we want to remind you that next Friday which is April 7th I believe yes at

• 1:35:23

11 a.m. Pacific we will be doing a creative director community Q&A with Steven who will

• 1:35:29

be chatting with Chibi from the Golden Feather Richie sh and some Merg from Ashes Pathfinders

• 1:35:35

and we are very excited to answer some of the community's questions beyond that we would

• 1:35:41

like you to remind you to head on over to our forums and leave us feedback there is

• 1:35:45

a thread already up there for forums ashes of creation comm in regards to our carfen

• 1:35:50

preview that we showcased here so please give us your feedback your thoughts it is very

• 1:35:55

helpful for us to make sure that we're all on the same page and of course reminding that

• 1:36:00

flavors of fellerin our cosmetics that will be swapping over on April 12th so if you'd

• 1:36:06

like those head on over and snack them and of course we want to extend a massive thank

• 1:36:10

you to you all for joining us today we appreciate you taking time out of your day or some of

• 1:36:15

you are watching while you're at work we won't tell and of course to I'm II Scott and Jeremy

• 1:36:22

for joining us for our preview section of carfen and Steven for your time and making

• 1:36:28

it through this even though you're sick so sorry guys I promise I will not be sick hopefully

• 1:36:33

in the week when we do that that Q&A stuff with the yeah hopefully you're feeling better

• 1:36:37

before then and with that we will be wrapping it up we hope that you have you stay healthy

• 1:36:44

and safe and you have a wonderful month and we will catch you next month for another development

• 1:36:49

update remember that the vod for this will be up on Twitch we'll also have the the high

• 1:36:55

res vod of like the carfen preview over up on YouTube and then this full vod will be

• 1:37:00

over on YouTube and if you leave us a comment and you are a subscriber on the development

• 1:37:05

update video you could be spotlighted in next month's live stream where we'll answer your

• 1:37:11

question and of course follow us in all the places Twitter Facebook Instagram everywhere

• 1:37:15

we are constantly posting things almost daily so if you want to interact with us head on

• 1:37:20

over there and of course on the forums and discord we're always available as well so

• 1:37:25

please pop on over there and join our community and partake in all the fun and we will see

• 1:37:29

you next month.

• 1:37:30

Bye everyone.