Talk:2023-05-31 Video - Alpha Two Cyclops Combat Preview

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Transcription brute

• 00:00

Welcome to another live stream in the world of Vera.

• 00:25

I am joined today by three glorious developers.

• 00:29

We have quite a few of our developers are participating in today's live stream.

• 00:34

I'm not going to go through everyone.

• 00:35

You'll see their usernames, their game handles on the top left side and our RAID UI.

• 00:40

But I have three amazing developers who are joining us today that have all taken part in helping to design the Cyclops and the combat that goes around it.

• 00:49

I know you guys in the community have been very excited to kind of see today's demonstration.

• 00:53

We're not going to get too elaborate in the designs of the Cyclops, right, because we don't want to spoil it for you.

• 00:59

But just as a disclaimer, this is one of the very first World Raid bosses that will be available for players to participate in.

• 01:06

So this is not super endgame, but it is going to give you some insight into how we're designing these encounters.

• 01:12

And first up, we have one of our senior designers, Mr. Doug.

• 01:16

How are you doing, Doug?

• 01:17

Good evening.

• 01:19

I'm doing pretty well.

• 01:20

I'm excited to show this off.

• 01:22

We've been working on it for a while.

• 01:23

Yeah, I'm super excited for you guys to show it off, too.

• 01:26

I know you guys have been hard at work on this one and a lot of other creatures.

• 01:29

And this is your first time joining us on the stream, isn't that right?

• 01:32

That is correct.

• 01:33

I have not streamed before.

• 01:34

Super exciting.

• 01:36

We have a streamed version with us.

• 01:37

Very cool.

• 01:38

We also have with us one of our glorious senior technical designers, Mr. Jason.

• 01:46

How are you doing, Jason?

• 01:47

Hey, how's it going?

• 01:48

And you are the, this one's your baby, right?

• 01:52

This Cyclops was kind of your design.

• 01:55

Yeah, been plucking away at him for a while.

• 01:59

I remember the first time we chatted about this guy.

• 02:01

You had such a great kind of premise for his backstory and the design elements of it.

• 02:08

I thought it was super cool.

• 02:09

I love the detaching tree, which our viewers are going to see in a little bit.

• 02:12

So I'm super excited that you have an opportunity to kind of talk with the community about this

• 02:15

and get their take on some of these designs.

• 02:18

And then we have one of our regularly occurring senior designers on the combat side, Mr. Trad.

• 02:24

How are you doing, Trad?

• 02:25

Doing great.

• 02:26

Good to be back as always.

• 02:28

Yes, welcome.

• 02:29

So we find ourselves here in the Riverlands.

• 02:34

And it appears to be a winter time.

• 02:38

It's beautiful.

• 02:38

Actually, I really like it.

• 02:40

So one of the first things I would love to chat with you guys about is kind of how you

• 02:45

set up this particular raid boss, the Cyclops, in the Riverlands.

• 02:51

Talk to me a little bit about his pathing.

• 02:53

Like where does he live in the world?

• 02:54

What's his backstory?

• 02:55

Just tell me things about him.

• 02:59

I think you could take this one, Jason.

• 03:03

Yeah, like the Cyclops, his name is Tumak.

• 03:06

And a long time ago, he is from the land of Sujoma.

• 03:14

And that's where all the Cyclopses are from.

• 03:18

He decided it would be a good idea to try to align himself with the Ancients that invaded

• 03:25

Berra.

• 03:25

And he took some of his followers to follow in his footsteps.

• 03:29

And that didn't work out so well for him.

• 03:34

He's the last remaining Cyclops of his people he took to try and join the Ancients.

• 03:41

And the rest of his people exiled him for that and they didn't want him back.

• 03:46

So he's all on his own and has paid for some of those mistakes of misaligning himself.

• 03:53

Okay, so he's got a little bit of a backstory, some pain in there, maybe some betrayal.

• 03:57

And I guess he turned against his fellow citizens of Berra.

• 04:01

Where are you guys at, by the way?

• 04:02

I know we have a couple of parties that are hanging back at the camp.

• 04:05

Oh, there you guys are.

• 04:06

Why don't you come join me over here?

• 04:08

I want to talk a little about kind of his pathing and I noticed that there are also

• 04:12

some winter spiders over here or something.

• 04:15

What is going on over here?

• 04:16

Yeah, so there are some giant spiders over here.

• 04:20

And one thing that we'd like to demonstrate today is that not every enemy in Berra is

• 04:25

going to just behave like they're a simple aggro immediately and beeline for you.

• 04:31

The giant spider might not necessarily want to engage these scary looking adventurers.

• 04:37

So he's going to stand off and hope that you back away.

• 04:43

That's so creepy.

• 04:44

I love the anim for this.

• 04:46

So he's kind of not necessarily aggroing, but he's just like, don't come any closer.

• 04:51

Like, back off, get away from me.

• 04:55

He is kind of peacocking.

• 04:56

I'm set to invulnerable because I want us to be able to kind of walk with the Cyclops

• 05:00

as we see him start to path here.

• 05:04

Wild animals, just not every single wild animal is going to immediately beeline for you.

• 05:08

And so that's the kind of behavior we want to capture, some more ambient behaviors you

• 05:11

might not expect to see in MMO.

• 05:13

Maybe some creatures hunting each other, these kinds of more believable behaviors from wild

• 05:18

animals.

• 05:19

That's super cool.

• 05:20

Oh, yeah, I like them.

• 05:23

That's awesome.

• 05:24

It adds an element of immersion, I feel like.

• 05:27

If you do stay within their range or get too close to them, then they might defend themselves.

• 05:33

That's super cool.

• 05:34

So talk to me a little bit about the Cyclops and its path and how you guys kind of determine

• 05:41

where this guy's going to roam and why it's an important aspect that the boss is kind

• 05:45

of roaming through the woods or through the world.

• 05:48

Yeah, so we work with the world team to decide what that path is going to be.

• 05:55

And we want to make sure that there's something of interest, no matter where you go.

• 06:01

That you don't become vulnerable just in case, I'm sorry.

• 06:04

Go ahead.

• 06:05

You're good.

• 06:06

Yeah, no matter where you look, no matter what path you go down, that there's always

• 06:10

a chance you're going to see something you didn't expect or you didn't see before.

• 06:14

So I love this guy.

• 06:17

He's so massive.

• 06:18

And I like how he kind of walks through the trees, triggering their destruction.

• 06:24

That's so cool that he interacts with the environment like that.

• 06:30

Yeah, definitely going to help you to listen.

• 06:33

You can just listen in the woods.

• 06:35

And if he's patrolling around, you're going to hear him.

• 06:39

Oh, my gosh, this guy's huge.

• 06:41

Oh, oh, sorry.

• 06:42

My bad.

• 06:43

I thought for a second there he was going to aggro me.

• 06:46

But just so you guys are aware in the stream, I've set myself to invulnerable so that we

• 06:50

can kind of just walk near him and see his massive nature.

• 06:56

And Doug, Jason, talk to me a little bit about the inspiration for this guy as a character

• 07:00

model.

• 07:01

What were you guys working with the character teams to kind of...

• 07:05

I noticed he has this massive tree.

• 07:07

Talk to me a little bit about that element.

• 07:09

Yeah, I think that was actually a little bit improvised in the design based on what the

• 07:13

character came back with, Jason, if you want to talk about that.

• 07:16

Yeah, when the character artists were making this, they had this cool idea of just having

• 07:20

this giant tree weapon that a cyclops would hold.

• 07:24

And we took that idea and just kind of embraced it, making it part of his character and the

• 07:29

embellishments that he wears and using that to kind of inform what type of encounter that

• 07:36

he might be.

• 07:37

So, you know, making the tree like a pretty core part of it and it informs some of his

• 07:42

combat abilities and phase transitions even in the fight.

• 07:46

Yeah, I mean, it's a collaborative process.

• 07:49

Sometimes it's design asking for something specific from art and sometimes art is what

• 07:52

informs the design.

• 07:53

So...

• 07:54

Oh, he looks great.

• 07:56

Character did a great job with this.

• 07:58

Do you know who's the character artist that worked on this?

• 07:59

Was it Keith?

• 08:00

I think it might have been Keith.

• 08:01

I think it was Keith or it could have been GenC or somebody.

• 08:05

Yeah, they did a great job, by the way.

• 08:07

I mean, it looks phenomenal.

• 08:09

I know we have a couple of parties that are going to assist us with this particular fight.

• 08:14

Talk to me a little bit about this encounter as a raid boss.

• 08:19

You know, what is the expectation from the actual raid size that you guys are anticipating

• 08:24

for the design?

• 08:25

I think that's going to vary depending on the level of the raid, obviously, and then

• 08:30

sort of how geared they are.

• 08:32

But we're kind of aiming for somewhere between, you know, 16 and 32, probably, depending again

• 08:39

on level of equipment.

• 08:40

Very cool.

• 08:42

So, this guy's a really early kind of world boss and we want to introduce players early

• 08:48

to the idea of these raids.

• 08:50

And by the way, as we're kind of chatting about this, those of you who are going to

• 08:53

be helping us defeat this guy with our two parties, if you want to start heading over

• 08:58

to the arena, we are waiting here for you.

• 09:02

I will set myself off of the GM and vulnerability here.

• 09:06

Let me see.

• 09:08

There we go.

• 09:10

Hopefully, I don't aggro him.

• 09:13

You know, it's important as we were talking about to kind of introduce players into what

• 09:18

raiding really means in Ashes and talk to me a little bit about kind of the general

• 09:22

design approach that you take with creating these types of encounters.

• 09:26

You know, there are obviously phases, there's different elements in those phases that kind

• 09:29

of change dynamically the way you want players to interact.

• 09:33

What are we going to see here a little bit?

• 09:35

Yeah, this is definitely like a more introductory raiding experience.

• 09:40

So it's not going to be too complicated, but I think there are some really interesting

• 09:43

mechanics regardless.

• 09:44

And I think Jason can talk about those.

• 09:46

Yeah, so when I first started designing this guy, you know, we had Trab and the other guys

• 09:54

on the archetype team looking at, you know, forming the classes that people have been

• 09:59

seeing over the live stream.

• 10:00

And you know, really before those kind of come to fruition and knowing what the full

• 10:07

abilities are and everything, I started the design with the core Trinity in mind.

• 10:13

So the roles are very obvious.

• 10:16

Tanks will tank, healers will heal, and DPS will try to take down the targets that they

• 10:21

need to.

• 10:22

And starting from there, I try to keep that in mind, not to overcomplicate it so that

• 10:30

they always have that like individual Trinity idea amongst the different mechanics.

• 10:33

Yeah, so we've got some classic staples in here.

• 10:37

We've got, you know, adds that off tanks are going to have to peel off and crowd control

• 10:42

that's going to need to be applied to those adds.

• 10:44

We've got priority targets that are going to pop up that need to be killed.

• 10:47

We've got, you know, damage that's going to be unavoidable so that, you know, even with

• 10:51

the expert group that can dodge all of his avoidable attacks, you know, the healers are

• 10:55

still going to have work to do to keep everyone alive.

• 10:59

Very cool.

• 11:00

Very cool.

• 11:01

Love it.

• 11:02

You guys will notice, obviously on the stream that there have been some updates to a little

• 11:07

bit of the name plates that Colby and the UI team have implemented as well as some of

• 11:13

the targeting plates as well.

• 11:15

But who do we have as our tank today?

• 11:18

That would be me.

• 11:19

Doug will be tanking.

• 11:20

Doug will be tanking.

• 11:21

All right.

• 11:22

All right.

• 11:23

Very cool.

• 11:24

And then we also have, I'll be playing as a mage, but I will be trying to capture some

• 11:31

good shots of the encounter to a degree.

• 11:34

Trad, what are you playing?

• 11:36

I am a mage as well, just like you.

• 11:38

Oh, okay.

• 11:39

Very cool.

• 11:40

And then how about you, Jason?

• 11:42

I'm playing the cleric.

• 11:44

Nice.

• 11:45

Well, Doug, I don't want to stand in the way of your greatness.

• 11:48

So please, by all means, sir, you may commence when ready.

• 11:52

All right.

• 11:53

Leroy Jenkins.

• 11:54

Leroy, let's do this.

• 11:55

Yeah, they're trying not to let me die, Jason.

• 11:59

Yeah.

• 12:00

No promises.

• 12:01

Oh, he's an angry Tumac.

• 12:04

Oh, my God.

• 12:07

That looks like it hurts.

• 12:08

Yeah.

• 12:09

If you don't block that, you get smushed.

• 12:13

I love his animation.

• 12:14

So talk to me a little bit about some of these attacks.

• 12:18

What do you got going on here, Jason and Doug?

• 12:23

So yeah, his first phase here, he has a lot of physical attacks, but he also employs a

• 12:29

lot of attacks using his tree like we see there with the roots hitting us.

• 12:33

And right now you can see he's also he's pulling some fungus out of the tree and using that

• 12:39

to heal himself.

• 12:42

He has a tank spike attack where he smashes the tree into the tank that Doug was blocking

• 12:47

earlier and generally does a lot of like a splash damage that other melee will want to

• 12:56

avoid not stand together.

• 12:58

Yeah, he's not particularly complex raid boss, but he's a great example of sort of what we

• 13:04

want to do with large creatures and ashes, having them interact with the environment,

• 13:08

having that camera shake that, you know, those knockdowns that make it feel like he is here

• 13:14

and he is crushing you.

• 13:18

Oh, he looks.

• 13:24

Oh, my God.

• 13:25

He keeps his charging there.

• 13:28

I'm just barely missing him.

• 13:31

Now talk to me a little bit about kind of the raid boss designs like you guys are working

• 13:37

with multiple stages.

• 13:39

I notice that right now he's just kind of, you know, roaming around.

• 13:43

He has different targets on his hate list.

• 13:45

Tell me, like, what's your general philosophy?

• 13:47

How did you guys approach this?

• 13:49

Yeah, so I think Jason did this a little bit earlier, but we designed this boss pretty

• 13:56

early on when a lot of the classes were still sort of nascent form.

• 13:59

So we really just wanted to focus on the whole the Trinity, you know, making sure that everyone

• 14:04

has a purpose in this raid, a role, whether you're someone who's focused on CC, whether

• 14:08

you're a tank, a healer, DPS, you know, giving those classic mechanics to give everybody

• 14:13

a job in the raid.

• 14:15

Like right now, for instance, he's put this tree down and there are going to be these

• 14:19

healing caps that appear and those are going to be a priority objective for DPS to take

• 14:24

down before they grow to full size, because if they do, he's going to go over, he's going

• 14:28

to stomp them and he's going to get healed for a huge percentage of his health.

• 14:34

Wow.

• 14:35

So we got to take this tree out because he's just going to keep healing.

• 14:39

Yeah.

• 14:40

And you definitely got to switch over to those healing caps when they appear.

• 14:48

That's super cool.

• 14:49

So he heals off of the mushrooms as well.

• 14:52

Yeah.

• 14:53

And as a player, if you destroy them or even if he stomps on them, if you happen to be

• 14:57

nearby when they blow up, you can get that heal as well.

• 15:00

So if you're taking some damage from the thorns from the tree or you got hit by one of his

• 15:05

large, you know, stomp attacks, you know, you might have a chance to get healed up if

• 15:08

you run over to those mushrooms before they blow up.

• 15:11

Okay.

• 15:12

We almost have this tree down.

• 15:13

Come on guys, focus it down.

• 15:15

Focus major DPS on the tree.

• 15:18

Let's try to kill this thing.

• 15:20

It's almost done.

• 15:21

Get it, get it before he picks it up.

• 15:24

Yes.

• 15:25

Everything release it all.

• 15:27

Oh, well done.

• 15:29

Oh, oh my God.

• 15:33

Why is he so mad?

• 15:35

He does not like when you break his weapon.

• 15:37

What the heck?

• 15:38

I mean, who would?

• 15:39

Jason, where'd you get the idea for that, for the kind of tree totem?

• 15:48

A lot of that came from the original design that we got from character art and that we

• 15:54

really enjoyed the way that it synergized with his looks.

• 15:58

We wanted to employ the use of the tree as like a core part of his encounter.

• 16:03

We ended up using it as like a magical tree where he gets a lot of his abilities.

• 16:11

But without that, he seems to get really mad and his more primal Cyclops giant nature comes

• 16:17

back as we see here.

• 16:19

Oh, that's cool.

• 16:23

So talk to me about those kinds of slams that he's doing.

• 16:25

And also I noticed like as he's running around, the trees are falling, the stone obelisks

• 16:31

are kind of getting destroyed.

• 16:33

Is there intent for these kind of environmental hazards to exist as well as part of the raid

• 16:40

design?

• 16:41

Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:42

For our large creatures, you know, Cyclopses, dragons, things like that, we want to make

• 16:46

sure that the world feels dynamic and it's reacting to their big size.

• 16:50

You know, if a huge, you know, 20 meter tall beast is walking through the woods and not

• 16:56

knocking down a single tree, that just doesn't feel believable.

• 17:00

So we want to make sure that, you know, you're going to hear that and that's going to be

• 17:03

a way you can know in the distance there's something that you want to go and investigate.

• 17:11

That is super cool.

• 17:13

I died, but I'm on my way back.

• 17:19

Those slams hurt really bad.

• 17:23

One of the aspects of the phases in this fight is actually that he has those healing abilities

• 17:28

when he has his totem tree, his nature magic, but, and he is more primal when he's in this

• 17:33

phase.

• 17:34

As a result, you can take him down a little quicker when he's enraged, but it's also going

• 17:37

to be a lot more incoming damage for your healers to work through.

• 17:40

So depending on your raid composition, your, you know, equipment level, you might want

• 17:45

to sustain longer in that earlier phase, even if it takes a while through all that healing,

• 17:51

because if you push him too early, you might just wipe.

• 17:56

Oh, I love it guys.

• 18:01

Here he goes again.

• 18:02

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 18:05

Oh, I was getting crushed there.

• 18:08

I was right under his fists.

• 18:11

Oh, this poor guy.

• 18:17

Look at him.

• 18:18

His little eye.

• 18:21

Wow.

• 18:22

That was very cool.

• 18:23

Well done guys.

• 18:24

That was awesome.

• 18:26

Does he have any loot?

• 18:27

Can we loot him?

• 18:28

I wonder.

• 18:29

Sword of the Briar home, a longbow, a shortbow and a mace.

• 18:37

Ooh, very nice.

• 18:39

Well that was a lot of fun.

• 18:40

Very well done.

• 18:41

I thought that that was very cool.

• 18:42

Guys, as you guys are watching this, remember, obviously this is one of the earliest world

• 18:47

bosses in Ashes of Creation that you'll have an opportunity to encounter.

• 18:51

It's getting your feet wet and what the raid boss system is going to look like.

• 18:54

We have a lot of fun designs that are intended with a lot of different creatures, but give

• 18:59

us your feedback.

• 19:00

What are the raid bosses you enjoyed in other games that you've played?

• 19:03

What about the mechanics?

• 19:04

What about the phases that you thought were cool?

• 19:07

What did you enjoy seeing here today?

• 19:10

And what would you like to see in the future?

• 19:12

But otherwise, Trad, Jason, Doug, thank you guys for joining us and giving us a little

• 19:18

sneak peek under the hood of the encounter design, particularly as it relates to Tumak,

• 19:23

the Wretched.

• 19:24

I thought that that was super cool, a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing more

• 19:29

from you guys in the future.

• 19:30

But with that being said, I would like to thank you all and we will see everyone back

• 19:36

on stream here in just a moment.

• 19:38

Thanks for having us.

• 19:39

Bye everybody.

• 19:40

Good time.

• 19:41

See ya.