Talk:2019-01-11 Livestream

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13:38

Margaret: Hello everyone welcome to our livestream. I'm new so you're probably like who the heck are you? I'm Margaret Krohn, I'll be your Community Marketing Lead and then of course you know these lovely people but I'll let you each introduce yourselves.

Steven: I'm Steven Sharif.

Jeffrey: Hi I'm Jeffrey Bard.

Margaret: And what do you do here?

Steven: Oh I'm the owner, CEO, creative director.

Jeffrey: I am the lead designer.

Margaret: Because we might have some new people coming in and checking it out.

Jeffrey: Hello new people.

Margaret: Hi new people. Welcome! So first we'll talk about what we're gonna be covering today. Today we're gonna be covering the Apocalypse beta weekend. We have a whole weekend filled with awesomeness. It's already live so you can hop in and you can play and you could put this up on your other monitor or like try to like have two things going if you can or use your phone. I don't know. Watch both at the same time. But you can be playing and also listening to us at the same time and that is gonna be going until 10:00 p.m. on Sunday evening Pacific Standard Time. Google to translate.

Steven: Yeah we're excited to have you guys in and testing Apocalypse. We're getting a lot of great data from this. It's really helpful for us.

Margaret: We'll be talking a little bit about what we're testing and like what kind of data we're gonna be capturing throughout this and then also we'll be moving in we'll be talking about siege design. We're gonna be going into - we're actually gonna show you footage of some of the siege maps which I think you guys are all gonna be really excited to see and then we also are going to go into some of the classes. We'll show you some emblems for those classes and then also go a little bit more deeper into those classes and talk about their roles and maybe some of their skills but I think we're gonna be - remember this is all subject to change we're very early in design on somebody's concepts. So you know the name of that ability might change down the line, that type of thing, or the class name. But yeah those are kind of things I'm gonna be starting with so I hope you guys enjoy that.

15:26

Margaret: But before we get all into all that there are some quick updates. I think the first thing that we want to talk about is my.com and mail.ru and so let Steven take that.

Steven: Yeah absolutely we are still working on some last-minute changes that need to be done before we can get the integration for Game Center up and running for the my.com and mail.ru players. We'll be expecting to get that done soon and will give you guys an update. You can also tune into the my.com and mail.ru official channels for updates there.

Margaret: Yeah and I've been trying to be really good about - because like obviously if you're playing on intrepid Studios launcher then you then you should be able to hop in and log in and have no problem but those are I've been trying to message that as much as I possibly can when people message me regarding that. I'm one person though I'm trying man. And then of course the next thing is I think we will have some huh fixes and things of that sort have you guys updated on those things. I know there's like a couple errors that we want to fix and wrap up so if you're covering some of those, we are gonna be messaging anything [cross-talk]

Steven: We're going to send out probably a little news with regards to downtime that we may be expecting in a couple of hours probably; and that's be coming update soon.

Margaret: Yeah and then of course the one thing that I'm sure all of you guys are excited about and I've seen you guys already spamming it in chat I have the bot set up so if you do !giveaway it should tell you what you need to do; but if you do AOC hype and you have to remember the case-sensitivity of that. Make sure you only do it once. If you do it more than once it takes you actually out of the giveaway, so haha spammers [laughter]. I love bots and how they just do exactly what I want, but if you just type that in chat then it will put you into the giveaway at the end of this when we're doing like the 5 minute wrap up towards the end when the stream is like at the end, I will pick the winners. We're gonna pick two of those that bot does tell you that too. Then the other thing is - oh and if you want more information on the beta !beta in chat if you're watching us live on the stream. If you're watching this on youtube just go to our blog page or I'll have it in the description below.

17:26

Margaret: I think we talked a little bit already about me and why I'm here but I guess, to go into detail I think I'm not gonna go too much into this - I think a lot of people if you want like checked out the AMAA that I did on Reddit I went into detail about some of the major things that I'd like to see changed and worked on. Thank You Steven or approving them. Basically my first day here I was like here are all the things and I was sitting with him and the producers and they're all you know we had our conversations and we were able to agree upon a lot of those things, so those are like the first step things that I need to accomplish.

Steven: Absolutely and by the way guys if I'm coughing-

Jeffrey: Steven is dying.

Steven: No no! I'm not dying.

Margaret: Everyone on Discord was like are you dying and what happens if.

Steven: I got sick and we had a you know we had sicknesses that kind of ran around as a standard thing.

Margaret: I was separately sick while I was moving to become join you all.

Steven: So I apologize in advance for coughing during the stream. But no we are extremely - I keep looking at the mic.

Jeffrey: I keep doing that too. I don't know why.

Steven: I know it's like right there. We are extremely excited at Intrepid Studios to have Margaret on board. She is an unbelievable asset already in just a week's period of time and the enthusiasm and passion that Margaret has for gaming is refreshing. It is like a kindred spirit and I'm just very excited. I'm just excited for what she can do.

Margaret: It's awkward when people talk about you and you are right there.

Jeffrey: But no, Maggie's been awesome! It's really been - you know we've needed this for a really long time; and we finally found the right person for it, so we're super stoked to have her on board.

Margaret: So speaking of that you may know a lot of people keep calling me your community manager, but I'm not actually your community manager. I will be handling a lot of the higher-level things in regards to that; and we are going to announce right now that we are hiring a senior community manager. So they will take on some of the roles of like the day-to-day communication. So, a lot of the Discord conversations, the responding to people on Facebook and Twitter, doing a lot of those types of things, while I'll be working like much higher level marketing and community development stuff like the content creator program and things of that sort and working with our press team and a lot of stuff like that.

Steven: And people can expect to find out who that senior community manager is very soon.

Margaret: We can't talk about it yet yeah so but whenever we are allowed to we definitely will.

19:48

Margaret: So moving on to the things that you actually probably really really want us to talk about. We'll go first in to our update and the status of the Apocalypse beta. Again just to reiterate we started today right on time at 9am.

Jeffrey: Servers up on time.

Steven: And we haven't had an audio issue yet [cross-talk]. What is happening?

Margaret: Don't jinx us. We did have the audio-visual guys here yesterday helping us set some things up and earlier today so cross our fingers we don't have any issues. But first things first we wanted to talk a little bit about what we're testing in this current beta so I kind of want to toss that to you guys and you can talk on that.

Steven: Yeah absolutely. So I mean we have as you guys know back in December you know we had launched the open beta and we immediately were inundated with a lot of traffic- a lot of people wanting to play; and that allowed us to see some issues that we still had.

Jeffrey: We saw some issues.

Steven: Yes and and you know our philosophy here is when we see an issue we need to address it. We need to take things down and we need to spend the time that's necessary in order to actually fix the problem. Yeah there are some systemic things that we we couldn't go maintain live and keep a straight face.

Steven: And because the architecture that's intended for Apocalypse is the architecture that will be intended for the MMORPG, it's vitally important that we get this architecture correct in preparation for the alphas and the beta's - gosh I keep looking at that mic.

Jeffrey: I do too man [cross-talk].

Margaret: Stop smacking the table too.

Jeffrey: We could we put like a little white box around it. Then they wouldn't hear us.

Steven: I'm sorry. It's vitally important that we get that architecture in a state that is acceptable for our alphas and betas for the MMORPG. I mean that's the whole purpose of Apocalypse BR mode, the castle sieges, the Horde that we intend to launch: Those are all geared towards preparing the alphas and betas for the MMORPG, because that's a giant task.

Jeffrey: We really want this stuff. I mean what we're working toward is having the stuff be live ready right. That's what you guys have been experiencing that's what you know this weekend test is about. You know and if we can say that our infrastructure is live ready you know by the time we get to another open session of this, we're in really good shape. So it's good for us right.

Steven: Yes and the other thing is excuse me it's important to note I mean that you guys know this because most of you who are tuning in have been tuning in but the whole purpose of an open development that you guys get to see the nitty gritty details of what it is to make a massively multiplayer game. It's a difficult thing to do

Jeffrey: There's a lot of moving parts.

Steven: And we're blessed with having a lot of very veteran developers right. I mean that's the great thing about Intrepid Studios is we get to take these developers who have their experience from major MMOs in the past and we get to employ that experience here on this project. Well that we're still doing some cutting-edge things, some new things, especially with an engine you know that requires a good amount of tender loving care and that has many features out of the box that yeah right; and we want to make sure that those things are are doing what we need them to do for the MMO.

Jeffrey: Yeah we fix the big problems- the big tough things first right. We get those out of the way and then the rest is content.

Steven: Yes.

22:59

Margaret: Yes and so just to reiterate some of the testing fixes we have; but these are also on the blog that I put up. So if you want to check that out I have actually a full patch notes. I think this the first time we've ever had patch notes.

Jeffrey: I believe so.

Margaret: If you want to see those you can check those out as well as like the known issues that we currently have. But like some of the major things that we were trying to fix were the bug fixes from the December test. I know we had like a quite a few of those; and we do have a new bug forum, so make sure that you check out that link and click that and if you if you encounter any bugs make sure you're using that format because it's gonna help our QA team be able to send that stuff with the things that they need in order to give that to the devs.

Jeffrey: Yeah I'd like to double up and like super like emphasize that, because that stuff goes directly to our QA team and our QA team is kind of taking that and using that to create repro steps. So you know as good as our QA team is they are not thousands of people and so that stuff allows us to get to the real problematic things really quick.

Steven: Absolutely and those of you who have yet to actually log into the new website, we have gotten the flow fixed with many of the bugs that had new registration and has had migration registration fixed including the username recovery and password recovery features are now available on the website. So it's very important if you have yet to migrate your account to go over to ashesofcreation.com, login and you will automatically then be migrated. Additionally some people did mention that they were still having issues seeing their previous purchases in their account information. That is a part of a script that we have been using from the original database of the old website. All that information is there. Most people have received what they should have; but if there are still some people who haven't make sure to file a support ticket so that we can dial in on on specifically those use cases and fix them, because it's likely you're not the only one necessarily you might represent a smaller subset of people. The last thing was with regards to the affiliate program. The affiliate program - all the data is present in the affiliate program. People who you have referred to the game, the purchases they've made, the credit that you have accrued: What happens right now is the way that the migration is set up: When players first log into the website they will then appear as part of your data. It's not showing all of the old data because those that data hasn't been migrated. It's dependent on a player logging in currently. However we will be migrating that data over at a later date regardless of if they login because they're still purchases that have been made.

Margaret: Okay. So it covers a lot of it and then also the 500 errors we talked a little bit about.

Steven: Right so the 500 series of error types that have been showing up mainly 502s were present when we launched the website back on the 18th. Majority of those have been fixed have been addressed. There still may be some from some issues that we may not have eliminated, but we are monitoring those with logs and we are addressing those issues moving forward. Additionally we brought on some help with a new web team to assist with some of these issues that we've been experiencing as well as our internal web team which has done a great job so far handling these issues; and you will see progress made and we'll update you with the progress on those issues.

Margaret: I have a lot of feedback for the web team too so don't worry. Probably a lot of things that you guys already have as well. And then I think the last thing on our testing fixes that we wanted to cover was also the launcher installer.

Steven: Right yeah absolutely. So the launcher and installer is going through different iterations. You'll notice that there will be some new messages that you'll receive when logging in. You're going to see some skin changes on that installer itself that it might show the blog and/or news. We'll change some of that then patch notes will soon become available through the launcher as well. You'll be able to click eventually and see those patch notes that we've already- I think you already uploaded those.

Margaret: Yes the first patch notes are up there in that blog post with all the other things that you need to know about the beta. So it's like that's a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know and we can update that if things change or anything like that.

Steven: And again guys just to reiterate and the great thing about this process although it seemed like a bumpy road over the past month is that it allows us to get these bumps out during this phase and as we approach alphas and betas for the MMORPG we will have already addressed many of these issues and we won't have to see them again moving forward.

Jeffrey: Ever ever again.

Steven: Yes.

Jeffrey: I was just looking at that microphone. I was telling the microphone hey don't worry microphone it will be okay.

27:26

Margaret: You guys are funny. And then I'm just gonna quickly go over some of the things that we are like the data that we're collecting and then we'll go from there. So some of the data that we're collecting is the user data from login registration flow, download flow, connection to matches, performance of services or servers, the comment balance and work we actually have design logs and stuff like that we're pulling combat logs from; and then of course right now we are currently testing solo and squads. You will see duos on there please do not queue for those. I actually put that in the blog as well that that is a that that is available currently like it shows it but don't [cross-talk]. You'll be in queue forever so just go do solos and squads. In the future I think we're planning on making sure that we can only show the ones that we want, but right now that's a that's an issue that we already know; and I think one of the things that we wanted to talk about- I think you guys might have talked about already was kind of showcasing to you guys like the things that we thought we knew that we didn't that we found out was totally different based on like the tests that we were working on. So I think to kind of iterate like how much the testing and what you guys are doing for us how it makes a difference for us.

Jeffrey: Yeah it's one of those things where you know you can test all day long in the office and until you get tens of thousands people doing something with it, stuff's not gonna break right. Like it feels robust and feels right. You look at the code everything seems like it should be fine. You're testing things out everything's working the way it's supposed to, and then you go live and all of a sudden everything breaks; and that's because just stuff at scale gets weird. You know there's a lot of stuff involved and balancing all that stuff and making that stuff responsive to all the people who are hitting at the same time; and that's kind of what we ran into with with our with our website design. You know there was way more people hitting it than we expected.

Steven: I mean I think in the in the week of when we had launched the Apocalypse from the 19 the 18th to the 27th we had over two and a half million hits and that was really with no marketing. We sent out one press release I think on December 6 or 8th and you know that's a great problem to have but it is something that again it prepares us for the future, which is what we want to do during this development stage.

Jeffrey: It's great and it's kind of illuminating in terms of how these beta processes work. You know we put stuff out there we really kind of slam it so that down line when we go live on day one everything works as it should and we have a wonderful launch and everybody can do all the things they want to do with it.

Margaret: Yeah I think one of the things that I want to reiterate too is and I've had to post this a lot is because I think a lot of people are concerned about Apocalypse and there's no MMO. Of course we're working on the MMO. I mean this Apocalypse is helping us test a lot of the systems, whether that's PvP and obviously right now you guys aren't seeing the PvE aspect of it, but with Horde mode I think they're gonna showcase a lot of that.

Jeffrey: I mean it is the MMO at the end of the day.

Margaret: Yes so I mean and that's what we showed off last week or last livestream was showing how we can just take what's in Apocalypse and just drop it into the MMO and experience that right [cross-talk].

Steven: And I've always said you know the transparency is a two-edged sword right. You get to watch a product develop and at the same time you get to watch a product develop. So I mean it has its upside and its downside: The downside is you know from a development standpoint all of these systems all of this this back-end all of the architecture we're developing all of those things relate to to the MMORPG right; and then additionally the systems that were working on with the MMORPG in preparations for alpha 1 you know we're a large team. Not all of our assets 100% are on Ashes of Creation Apocalypse right. We're still moving forward in the MMORPG in preparations for alpha 1.

Margaret: Yeah and I think I'll be able to showcase a lot of those things with some of the content really making more articles we're gonna be making more videos and even some fun gifts that will kind of show you guys sneak peeks into things. So we have a lot of plans and I hope that that kind of suffice and help you guys see what we're creating and maybe not because some of those things won't be in Apocalypse because they're not for it right. So you're gonna get to see a lot of it.

31:37

Margaret: So that's a perfect transition into our next topic, which is siege design. So I think the first thing that we're gonna do is we're actually gonna play a video for you so yeah we hope that you guys enjoy the video and I will be talking a little bit about it as soon as you return.

Video insert

34:26

Margaret: And so that was the video. I know that there's some people who want to see gameplay and stuff. We'll be showcasing a lot of that as we get closer. There was like actually another video that we were discussing putting in there and then we're like no we'll just hold off. But let's talk first about kind of these castles that you see here. I want to talk about the names of them and the lore, so I'm actually gonna throw that over to you and we can start things off if you want.

Jeffrey: Yeah so we basically have right now we've got two maps. Not quite sure exactly how many maps we're gonna end up with, but we have one representing the Dünzenkell, which are the sort of Dwarven folks pre-fall. Their castle is named Milnar and yeah so it's kind of like a very dwarveny kind of experience. There's some underground tunnels, there's a lot of different ways to like kind of go underneath the map and then of course their walls are big and sturdy and strong; and it's built into the face of the wall; and so there's there's some very interesting tactical concerns dealing with the Dwarven castle.

Steven: It's all situated on a mountainside right and the attackers battlefield is kind of against the precipice a little bit.

Jeffrey: Your backs are against a cliff basically.

Margaret: You can't get behind. No flanking.

35:44

Steven: No flanking. And then we have the Corgan castle, which is the Aelan map.

Margaret: Which is you humans.

Steven: Right. That's right. These are the ancient humans before the fall; and you know the idea behind these castle map is you know we have to - there are five castles that are intended for Ashes of Creation the MMORPG. So it's very likely that eventually you will see five castle maps on the Apocalypse gameplay. So the idea here is that you know we have two sides: We have the attackers and the defenders right; and when you join into the castle siege in Apocalypse you're going to be able to select one of six classes. Right and upon selecting those classes then you're going to be placed on your starting side, whether it be the attacker or defenders; and then you're going to be able to start preparations. It's gonna be a little bit of a loading time where you have selected those classes. You're going to take positions perhaps and whatnot; and there are siege weaponry that's going to be present there as you see here some ballistas, some trebuchets, a battering ram and maybe some traps and some powder keg kind of stuff available to destroy some things [cross-talk].

Jeffrey: The whole first case is gonna be about figuring out how to get inside the castle. So that's kind of what that first phase is gonna be about. It's gonna be a lot of things blowing up. People trying to stop you from blowing up their things. It should be a pretty exciting phase of the game; and then eventually once those walls are breached it's gonna be about capturing capture points. Capture points can increase or decrease the duration of the map. It will change the opposing side's respawn times. It will give your side a nice good buff to help you kind of keep the morale up on your side and keep making progress; and then of course any capture point you take when you respawn you can teleport to that capture point. So there's a lot of a lot of interesting things that can happen on the battlefield a lot of different changes in flow of how fights happen. So we're pretty excited about it all.

37:45

Margaret: I think and then obviously you guys talked a little bit about all of those things- let's talk a little bit about how the differences are going to be when it comes to like Apocalypse versus the MMORPG so we can kind of show like that.

Jeffrey: Yeah so I mean by and large we're modeling this after kind of what we want to see happen in the actual MMO. Obviously there's going to be you know more classes. There's gonna be more skills. You know there are probably going to be more different types of siege weaponry. You know there will be more of a lot of stuff. But the overall kind of basic combat of it will be very similar to what you're going to see here.

Steven: Right I mean talking about strategy: The ability to capture these points, the ability to penetrate the walls and or gates creating these choke points that have become available. The primary objective on the attackers end is to reach the center keep of the castle to channel on the final like relic that's present in order to actually achieve the victory. Whereas on the defender's side you are attempting to hold out and you can keep rush you can rush the field as a defender. You can approach the enemy encampment, their headquarters and you can damage their ability to siege basically.

Jeffrey: Right you can take out their siege weapons. You can take out their control points. You can reduce their increase their spawn time. So that you know you can gain the upper hand. But again that's gonna be very similar to what's going to be happening in the MMO.

Steven: Yes and in the MMO, castle sieges are very- a primary point of contention when it comes to guild play, PvP on the map you know.

39:18

Margaret: I was just going to say. Do we want to transition and talk a little bit about raid versus raid stuff. I know we don't want to go into super detail about that yet but I know that we wanted to touch base like a little bit to give you guys a teaser of what that's gonna be.

Steven: Absolutely. I mean you know when talking about raid vs. raid right there's a lot of mechanics that come into play. There's the balance that exists between the classes and the composition of those raids against each other. How the rock-paper-scissors type of interaction occurs between those different compositions. There's also the mobility aspect: How quickly you can move a raid across a battlefield. How you can keep them cohesive and move together. How do raids impact the choke points of a castle. How wide of an of a opening do you need in a castle in order to make sure that you're not going to be running into death's arms when you decide to charge. Exactly all of those ideas can get tested in Apocalypse in preparation for the MMORPG because as we scale up the number of participants that are present in these matchmaking type sieges, we get to collect data- design data on how players in Iraq with all of those yes right. We can expand on the limited classes that will be present in Apocalypse in preparation for the core functionality of those skills as they relate to roles in the raid composition.

Margaret: And I think there's some people who are like: so where the Dragons at? You got castles, where's the dragons at? [laughter]

Steven: We do have dragons but not in Apocalypse.

Margaret: Yeah some people were asking- like they were saying like it'd be kind of really neat to have like one person be the king and you kind of like king of the hill style.

Jeffrey: It would be very cool as a new game.

Steven: As many people know who've been following Ashes of Creation the MMORPG, you do have a royal mount that is granted to the Lord of a castle: King or Queen of a castle; and that royal mount does have some efficacy on the battlefield when it relates to mass PvP - the ability to impact particularly raids. Kind of breathing down fire or whatever other type of skills that specific royal mount has. But in Apocalypse we have yet to really work on that system. I don't know if well it'll see its head in Apocalypse

Jeffrey: It's a little bit difficult when you're talking about sort of like match [cross-talk].

41:20

Margaret: I think this next question is kind of a perfect transition into our next topic, which is Agreek wants to know or Ageek wants to know - it's spelled different. Are you adding new classes to the siege or is it just a plain overall basic class similar to like I don't know what the word plain is used but like our BR?

Steven: So you know we do have six classes that are a set will be associated with the castle siege mode in Apocalypse and those six classes really relate to the Holy Trinity of a standard kind of class design between tanks damage mitigation and control versus DPS and support; and I think - do we have those oh on the screen. So you can see this is for the Apocalypse castle sieges. You'll be selecting one of these six classes when entering into the siege mode map; and we can start we want to start with going through them?

Margaret: Yeah let's just start with going through them. I mean obviously these are the ones that you guys see here. I want to give a shout out to Ryan who made the awesome emblems, so check those out. Those are awesome. I'm sure he's watching the stream. But yeah let's just go into the first group of them. We'll pop those onto the screen. So we kind of had each of these separate and we're going to talk about each of them. So I guess Archwizard is to start off. We'll go with the DPS classes. So maybe let's first talk about DPS classes and their basic roles overall, which is probably DPS, and then go into the specifics with the high priest versus the engineer.

42:55

Jeffrey: Yeah so we've got the Archwizard, which is kind of focused on doing AoE damage. So there's a kind of clear out an area to deal damage to lots of people. They don't have the kind of focus fire ability that the Hawkeye does, but in again they're really focused on doing a large amount of damage to a large amount of people. They also have some clever tricks up their sleeves. They are wizards after all. So a couple different abilities that you might find an Archwizard to have - we have the idea of a defensive teleport. So a wizard can get into battle but they also can get out of battle and they use little tricks to do that. So they will teleport backwards a good distance and leave behind a decoy so that other players don't necessarily know where he went. They also have kind of a flamethrower ability so they'll be able to put their hand out channel some energy and just kind of continually do fire damage in a cone in front of them for as long as their mana bar lasts out. So that's kind of the Archwizard.

Steven: Yeah and one of the ideas that we're playing with that we want to test necessarily is how DPS damage affects either armor and/or health right; and one of the ideas behind the Archwizard is that magical damage from the Archwizard would be more impactful against armor then a player has as opposed to necessarily health; and vice versa for the Hawkeye.

44:18

Jeffrey: Hawkeye has abilities that allow them to ignore armor entirely and they can kind of focus on getting headshots and stuff that again can get out of the armor situation.

Margaret: So I do have a question from the chat is regarding obviously the two DPS classes that we're showcasing right now are these two. Are there gonna be any melee ones as well?

Steven: Yes. Both The Guardian and the Weapon Master are primarily melee in nature.

Jeffrey: Yeah they're almost- they are entirely melee in nature.

Margaret: Answers your question.

Jeffrey: And then as far as the Hawkeye goes, a couple of cool abilities that they have is they've got a grappling hook so that they can get up onto high places easily. They can basically you know shoot people from afar and so we want to give them the ability to kind of take advantage of that and get up into position quickly. Again that's partly because they have a lot of abilities that kind of lock themselves down.

Margaret: I like the way they fire the most because it's like the guided arrow kind of thing.

Jeffrey: Yeah so that's one of the abilities we have is a guided arrow. So that when they fire this ability allows them to kind of actually pilot the arrow so they can get around corners and kind of take out people who are giving them a lot of trouble.

Margaret: We'll need a lot of testing with that so have fun. 'Cuz I think you might have even said like so how's that gonna work with walls?

Jeffrey: Well you just go around.

Margaret: I mean that's right.

Jeffrey: We want to keep it fun right.

Steven: Oh we're talking about the grappling hook.

Margaret: I was talking about the guided arrow.

Steven: Oh yeah yeah I said walls, I wanted to know what the wall - how that would over the walls is if you shoot the grappling hook at the top of the wall that we make sure you fly over and don't just hit the lip [cross-talk].

Jeffrey: And just go down! [cross-talk]

Steven: I'm like that's gonna be interesting. We need to make sure that we get some momentum.

Margaret: Yeah that's the thing with like internal testing. We get to like have all these pic - like these videos of like terrible things happening before you guys can just see them. I have a lot of really funny bug videos from past games that I've worked on. But yeah so I think we're gonna go into like our next class a little bit then.

46:25

Jeffrey: Which are- What's the next slide? I can't see it [cross-talk]. Yeah so we've got Guardian is kind of your more traditional sword and board kind of guy. He's really focused on armor mitigation; and then we have the Weapon Master and the Weapon Master is more focused on a big health pool in keeping that health pool full and they're kind of more like get in front disrupt the back lines and kind of move people out of the way so that other people can get through. So to that end the Guardian has the ability to do an AoE pull. You may have seen this in our alpha 0. Basically they can throw out a bunch of Spears, bring everybody to them and kind of force them to engage the the Guardian. Then they also have a kind of a mobile shield that they can deploy. That's kind of attached to the character. The character can move it around. It'll block any projectiles coming their way. Prevent them from getting to the back lines; and then it will also absorb that damage and that eventually explode doing AoE damage based on how much damage is absorbed.

Margaret So I can stand in front of my friend and blast stuff.

47:36

Jeffrey: And I can heal. That's cool. Then for the weapon master right we've got again the idea behind the weapon master is they're super aggressive they're trying to get in, disrupt things, make people run away; and one of those abilities is the ability to leap. So these are not official names. We'll do a canonical pass on names later. So they can basically do a gigantic leap forward they'll do a superhero ground pound or maybe smash the weapon down and then kind of blow everybody up from where they land. So again this is really focused on getting them into the fight quickly and disrupting the opponent's lines. Then a oldie but a good one: Spin-to-win: Whirlwind. They're gonna stick out their weapon and just start spinning around doing a lot of AoE damage.

Margaret: I know there's been some questions in chat regarding like showing some of this combat. Stay tuned on our social channels we may be showing a little bit of some animations and gifs and some of these classes and their abilities as we move forward in the future.

48:39

Jeffrey: And then finally we have our support classes we've got the high priest which is focused on sort of health and keeping people alive and maintaining sort of the stability of their team; and then we have the Engineer who is more focused on either bringing things down or keeping things up. So they're focused on inanimate objects like siege weapons, walls gates. Making sure that stuff either stays healthy or gets blown up.

Steven: Right and they each have their own specific you know energy pools that they kind of manage and support right. The high priest is focusing on health and stamina and replenishing those for the players, where the engineer focuses on armor and mana and being able to augment those for players.

Margaret: Can you talk a little bit more about like how that process is gonna work? Like how healing and how like repairing is going to work. Because I know a lot of people have asked like how like the actual interaction between the players is going to be.

Jeffrey: So one of the things that we're doing right. We're still kind of in the experimentation space and we're trying to figure out what exactly works well and what doesn't. But right now we're really happy with what we're doing with the scepter. So each class gets two weapons. I don't think we mentioned this before but the High Priest one of their weapons is the scepter; but what we're doing with the scepter is we're gonna make it so that any allies that the scepter hits it heals and that any enemies that it hits at damages. We're also -

Margaret: Like the booty, you know. Like when you're in sports. I always see in football, like Americal football, people slapping each other's butts.

Jeffrey: Yeah, sure. That's exactly what we're doing! [cross-talk] So again one of one of the nice things about - I'm sorry I try not to use my hands. I'm putting them under the table. So one of the nice things about the scepter right is that it already has a homing component to it; and so that makes it a little bit easier. Instead of just shooting out something and hoping you hit, you can really focus on kind of guiding your heals where they need to be.

Steven: Yeah, the way it works is you know on your reticle when you have a target, whether it be friend or foe, they kind of home into that target. Yeah absolutely; and then other things are going to be you know AoE based kind of heals, pools that you can lay down. These are abilities where you can kind of indicate to your allies: Hey come near, I'm going to support you and give you some buffs.

Margaret: The one thing that every healer is like: Can you all just get close to me 'cause I'm trying to heal you.

51:05

Jeffrey: And then we're also gonna bring back an oldie but a goodie. We're gonna give our Clerics divine form. So divine form if you guys played our Alpha 0 was one of the Ultimates that the Cleric had in that version. Well we're going to keep it really similar, so it basically gives the cleric - or sorry High Priest a increased damage mitigation. It will heal allies who are around and damage enemies who are around them. So it's kind of a super powerful buff that they get to use every once in a while. And then finally the Engineer. The Engineer is I should caveat this: The engineer is very specifically a pre-fall class. You're probably not going to see an Engineer proper in Ashes of Creation the MMO. Remember that this is a lot of progress that these civilizations have made during this period of time and then after the fall happens and everybody goes off to Sanctus, magic disappears so they have to kind of re-figure out how to do a lot of these things.

Margaret: Actually someone was asking if there's gonna be resurrect as an option.

Jeffrey: Resurrect might be an option. We still have to kind of figure out-

Steven: So I mean the idea behind the life pool player lives in Castle Sieges that are different than what you're seeing currently in Apocalypse with the Battle Royale mode is that you have an infinite number of lives. What's different is upon death you join a period of time that the respawn timer everybody shares; and let's say that respawn timer is 20 seconds and you die when that it's reached 10 seconds. You have 10 seconds remaining until you respawn with a pool of your allies.

Jeffrey: Yeah it's like a dead pool.

Margaret: We're all dead together. It's fine friends.

52:47

Jeffrey: So for the engineer a couple of the abilities that they have: They have one of their primary weapons is the crossbow; and they have an earthquake bolt. So they can fire out a little contraption that unfolds and starts pounding the ground and every time it pounds it'll knock all the enemies up that are around it. Again kind of keeping people out of position. Kind of affecting the battlefield and supporting their allies in a way that doesn't necessarily deal direct damage; and then they also have the gizmo of ingress, which is a little pod that they can place down and anybody who is an ally who steps on that pod gets a Catfall use - one-time use, so they can kind of help their friends kind of get over the walls, get into places the otherwise shouldn't be.

53:30

Margaret: Yes and there's some questions regarding like damaging armor and how that's going to work and the difference between the MMO and also APOC.

Steven: Right so what you're seeing currently in the Battle Royale feature of Apocalypse is you find armor and that gives you an armor pool and then you can regenerate your armor. What we're going to be experiencing in the castle siege form is each class will have a set amount of armor that they join the match with that's already full and a set amount of health that's already full. Upon losing armor you can either have your armor replenished by an Engineer or there there may be ability for you to find items that are in the world or there could be objectives that replenish armor for the entire team, such as one of the buffs for taking a control point.

Jeffrey: Yeah I think he was asking more like how does that translate to the MMO in terms of - which it's going to be different. Armor is not gonna function as a pool in the MMO. There will be like straight mitigation in one health pool. So you're not going to see an armor bar like you would in in this version the arena mode.

54:49

Margaret: And then I think the next question was for the classes in siege mode will this have stamina on melee weapon swings and magic to recharge ranged weapons?

Jeffrey: Yeah so we're gonna probably change a little bit of that. You're gonna see abilities use stamina and mana more often than you do in in the straight BR mode. You - generally though it's gonna work fairly similar. We'll probably give mana a regen rate - a passive regen rate; and we'll probably have some class interact with that at some point. But you're not gonna find like mana drops on the field like you do in the BR. So that's gonna be handled a little bit differently. Pretty close but it'll be handled a little bit differently.

55:29

Margaret: And there's a lot of spam in chat asking about dual wielding class.

Jeffrey: There's unfortunately no dual wielding class yet.

Steven: Not yet.

Margaret: Aww. There you go. So that answers some of that. I guess that is our classes.

Jeffrey: Yeah know. That was a lot of talking.

Margaret: I hope that you guys like those and you know give us feedback on some of those ideas that we've thrown out and you know if you have some ideas of your own you could send them our way. But obviously as we get closer to revealing some of those we're gonna be showing you guys the animations, how some of those skills work. In fact we're working on some videos that will be specific to each class, so we'll have class videos for the siege classes. So there's a lot of cool stuff that's gonna be coming out and hopefully you guys enjoyed that content.

56:11

Margaret: I think the last thing that we want to talk about in regards to classes is maybe like small-scale raid composition formats and like how what classes are gonna be really good together or like what kind of things that you guys would recommend for people as we move forward.

Steven: Yeah the idea behind - we're talking about raid composition for the castle sieges in Apoc yeah. So the raid composition for castle sieges in Apocalypse: When you're in the class selection phase - this would be at the beginning of the match - you're going to be able to see your team selection numbers that are associated with how many people have chosen the Guardian, how many people have chosen Engineer. The idea behind our balance is that these are intended to work together as a fairly balanced composition. So you're going to want to be as balanced as possible: the number of these classes that you select; and being able to see at the beginning of the match you know how many people have selected what is going to give you the the information to select other ones

57:03

Margaret: And people are wondering if you're gonna be able to change classes during siege mode, so like will you go an and you're stuck in that class during that mode, or what you will so like swap during the middle of battle?

Jeffrey: We're still discussing that. We kind of keep going back and forth on it. There's benefits and pros and cons to both sides. I think right now we're leaning towards not being able to switch. We don't really want class switching to be a meta that ends up becoming part of the game. But we're still really considering it. It's not - we don't have - we have strong feelings both ways, but we really - we still haven't come to a final decision.

57:38

Margaret: This is a cool question too. Will Apocalypse still be running once the MMO is launched?

Steven: Most likely yeah.

Margaret: I think like our plan is to kind of have two simultaneous products [cross-talk].

Steven: I mean the idea again - the idea behind Apocalypse is that it gives us an avenue to test certain types of features -

Margaret: We can preview stuff -

Steven: Exactly so for example in horde mode as we have bosses with specific types of mechanics, we can see how those bosses interact with the Horde mode before we'd intend to place that boss in the MMO.

Jeffrey: It actually is a really great way to test world bosses because we can really throw a ton of people at a given monster to see what happens without necessarily having to reveal all that stuff in the MMO proper [cross talk].

Steven: The same is true for skills and abilities that we may want to test the functionality of, right. Being able to scale up the number of combatants within an area. We can start to push those bounds easier in a confined matchmaking process than we can at [cross-talk].

Jeffrey: It's like a controlled experiment really.

58:40

Margaret: What does that mean we are as we're playing? So I think another question people had are we going to increase the pool of classes? Like are these the final six classes or will there be more classes that you're thinking about adding?

Steven: We had a little bit of an idea that we're going to explore with regards to each of the classes having a range of skills and abilities that players can customize that skill kit based on their progression within a season, let's say; and that progression can be gained from any of the modes and it would grant you the ability to kind of customize that skill kit for the before the siege mode or the horde mode. But that's something that might come at a later date.

Jeffrey: And as far as classes go, it's possible I'm not quite sure you know what our timeline will be six months from now or where we're at. Right now six classes possibly in the future they'll be more. Internally for other modes there might be more too.

Margaret: Yeah and I think that you know that kind of wraps up a lot of the stuff that's regarding siege and you know thank you guys for for tuning in here. The plan is that I will be putting a lot of this stuff into an article. So if you are watching this video you know like that's a lot to consume, I will be putting some of this into articles so you guys won't get to see some of that in a little bit easier format. I'll embed the video for the live stream as well so if you you know miss that will be what you'll be able to watch that; and the little video that you guys saw of the siege mode that's gonna be up on our YouTube channel after this stream so you can go like immediately go watch that. But I do want to cover some other questions. Obviously I was pulling questions throughout the stream in chat. That's gonna be moving forward something that I'll be doing. So make sure that you're asking your questions pertinent to the subjects that we're talking about. But I also did talk to our Phoenix Initiative backers as well as our Content creators and they submitted some questions. Because everyone's always like you're asking the same questions, we want some other ones. Steven has agreed to try even the hard ones. So here we go. I'm just gonna read them off and you guys can answer them.

Steven: I have not screened these questions. Which we never do.

1:00:37

Margaret: So Jalon was asking as APOC was designed to feed data, actually combat testing, for the MMORPG and now APOC is a few weeks/months off its original timeline - that's what they think - can you touch upon how one product can be behind schedule but the other is still on like still on schedule?

Steven: Absolutely. So when you from a project management standpoint -

Margaret: Sorry if my reading's weird.

Steven From a project management standpoint when you have a large team of developers working simultaneously on separate features and/or systems that are required for different milestones, different deliveries. That's really kind of how you approach this whole thing. You know yes we did have some hiccups that we experienced in the beta rollout of the Apocalypse with regards to the battle royale and the castle siege. However the benefit of those of those types of delays is that it helps us to address underlying issues which would have caused delays at a later date with regards [cross-talk] which would have impacted the alphas and beta of the MMO.

Jeffrey: If you could imagine right like if we go into alpha 1 and - sorry alpha 1 phase 2 we would have exactly the same problems that we've encountered so far right and so the same sorts of things would happen now those delays aren't going to happen so it adjusts our whole schedule around that.

1:02:10

Margaret: Okay and our next question is from Truth Eternal and they're saying that you know we have talked a lot about how we're working on combat balance in Apocalypse and they're wondering what imbalances do you think need the most attention right now? I can think of one thing that everyone spams me every single day with.

Steven: Bonesmasher?

Margaret: Yeah! [laughter]

Jeffrey: Well that was addressed today. Oh actually no it hasn't been addressed sorry. It will be addressed next patch.

Margaret: Yeah it was patched today.

Jeffrey: Um so one of the things we're doing is we're still getting all that data aggregated and sort of in a form that's easy for us to grok and kind of parse through and really kind of digest and use in smart ways right. So right now I think it's relatively obvious that the sort of balance between melee and ranged seems really weighted on melee. That's just based on what I've watched people do on their streams and in terms of what's actually happening in the game, we're still kind of waiting to see what the numbers tell us in the logs themselves so -

Margaret: I feel like melee homies are always like damn man. 'Cause you're like - you've to like run up and catch somebody you know.

Steven: Melee's pretty strong honestly in the Battle Royale right now. But what I would say is that you know with regards to understanding balance and how we approach those- you know there's a select number, going back to Jalon's question a little bit - there's a select number of developers who are associated with the addressing bugs and/or issues within Apocalypse and the Battle Royale mode. When we have balance issues those kind of fall a little bit behind the bugs issues right [cross-talk]. Yeah exactly bugs are a much higher priority than addressing some of the balance issues that are present, especially during a beta phase right. When we're out of the beta phase for the Battle Royale that's when we can start addressing some of the balance issues. But the beta phase is really intended to focus on the bugs, what is impairing players from actually getting into the game and participating [cross-talk]. Server performance absolutely.

Jeffrey: And we also kind of have to have just more data right. We haven't quite gotten to a point where kind of the stability has been there so that kind of people figure out how all the weapons work, how all the abilities work, how they interact together. So we kind of want it to bake a little bit before we actually start like pulling those levers really hard and so.

1:04:32

Margaret: Cool. All right. Moving on to our next one. And I apologize if I say people's names wrong. I'm getting used to it like used to all the names so give me a chance... Davlos says will there be a reputation or standing system for guilds/alliances to set on each other in order to facilitate politics among them? Identifying players as allies, friends, suspects or enemies at a glance will make the lives of guild leaders much easier. I think it's a kind of a cool thing.

Steven: It is a cool idea. Right now the intended functionality of between guilds from both an alliance standpoint in a war standpoint is that you know we have a specific system that relates to being able to invite another guild into an alliance that sets a flag on those characters with regards to being able to combat them, being able to share a chat system with them, being able to participate in specific types of quests and/or Alliance warehouses and guild homes; with regards to the relationship of castle sieges and participating in node warfare and node activities. If you're not in an alliance with someone, you're in a neutral state so to speak. You can have trade agreements between different guilds and then you can also have Guild Wars which shows a state of war between you guys. I think that's the baseline of how we're going to develop interaction between guilds. It would be nice to have in the administrative window of a guild leader and/or the guild leadership that you can flag relationships with [cross-talk].

Jeffrey: It's a very great cool thing to do but again it's kind of beyond the scope of where we're at right now. It would be a great thing to add in a-

Steven: I mean as you guys know my interested specifically having led a lot of games in a guild that I once was leader of would be to have as much of that type of administrative granularity present for the leadership of a guild to participate in because it makes life much easier when that's all housed and present in the game and not having to refer to your Google Docs and whatnot.

Margaret: Like you know I've always I've had like guild meetings where all the guild leaders are like meeting together and like we have like teamspeak meetings like oh man OG times. It was good stuff.

1:07:02

Margaret: Of course then let's move on to the next one 'cause we still a lot more to go through with you guys. Danny wants to know will there be a scandal hidden in every APOC mode and if so are the rewards for finding the same in every mode or are they dependent on the mode?

Jeffrey: So far so good. That's all I have to say about that.

Steven: There will be some interesting Easter eggs with with within the shape of a sandal that are present through in the game, yeah.

1:07:34

Margaret: Daedalus wants to know with 64 class combinations, which if you've ever looked at our class combinations, you can look at it up on our blog. I think there's one of the blog that has that if you haven't ever seen it. With 64 class combinations what are some of the things the team is planning to facilitate meaningful character differences with the secondary choices?

Jeffrey: So that's a big question. I'll try to unpack that best I can in as concise away as I can. Basically because the secondary class augments the primary class we get a ton of differentiation just from that right. The tank will always always be different from the fighter which will always always be different from the rogue no matter what their secondary class is going to be right. So you've got that going for you right; and then also the augments themselves they are so unique for each class. You know the tank who chooses a mage will get augments for their their skills that are unique to the tank right. The fighter - even though the tank and fighter are kind of a little bit related, they play very differently right. If the fighter chooses a mage, they'll be getting augments that are specific to the fighter class. So the kind of uniqueness and the characterization of these secondary choices are really baked into those choices. So in terms of playstyle and how these things play, these classes won't feel alike at all.

Steven: Right and something that we've spoken of in the past-

Margaret: They seemed very different just even like even just reading like the names and kind of seeing like where they're gonna go and I think you guys have talked a little bit about each of them here and there if you kind of go all over the internet.

Steven: Very quickly something that we've spoken over in the past with regards to those augments are not just housed solely within the secondary class option. There are going to be quest-specific and/or society specific augments that can that can layer on top of and these might change the energy descriptor, it might move from a radiance to a darkness. It might be a fire or electricity that gets changed with some of these augment abilities. They might be effects changes that are present and not necessarily all being vertical progression, but some horizontal options that are present in the changes of these abilities that kind of relates specifically to the progress that you have made, not just in your adventuring class but also in the other progression paths that are present: Exploration, societies, node progression, guild progression. Those types of things all kind of tie into skills and abilities that create a uniqueness: A presence on the battlefield that a player can see: Hey I just saw this shield-wall spawn. I know that that's this guy's shield wall because I have seen him on the battlefield before and his is unique.

Margaret: That's intense.

Steven: That is intense.

Margaret: Like knowing that that specific shield wall is somebody's. That's a very specific thing.

1:10:31

Margaret: I think this is gonna be our last question because we are getting close to our time. I know it's been a lot. But obviously if I know there's some other questions that are in here next time we do a live stream we'll do the same process so we'll be taking live questions from Twitch chat throughout the stream and then I will do this again for our PI and our lovely Content Creators as well so we can get some more of these types of questions in and we'll do a little Q&A thing at the end depending on if we have time. So this one's a big one: There's a lot in here and this is from Atropos. Sorry if i'm saying your names wrong. Could you share the progress update on development of the core MMO systems, which add dynamicism to the world? Ie node progression caravans and events. I'd love to hear what these systems are - how these systems are progressing and whether any discoveries from your internal testings that have evolved you're thinking about how they will work in the MMO.

Steven: I mean as you guys know since over a year ago we've had the core vertical slice of many of these systems particularly with regards to the node developed for our alpha zero testing. Many players participated in the alpha zero testing. It was under NDA however we did recently release the verbal NDA. People can discuss what they saw kind of present at that time. You've seen the this speed at which we progress when it comes to creating this Apocalypse game and these different game modes that we've released. How we made it to PAX after only three months after the Kickstarter and had a playable demo that was present there. This the progress on systems and the core technology behind what makes Ashes of Creation as an MMORPG work - those defining systems and features are currently in a state of active development; and they're being prepared for alpha one. And as we approach alpha one many of the the questions and desires for our community to kind of see these systems will be in a presentable state we'll be able to offer kind of videos showing those things and I was just showing you a little bit of the wall destruction physics and stuff. I was like Margaret can we show this?

Margaret: But here's the thing like we always looking at tech and the thing for us on that front is once we see all of us get in and we're all destroying the walls and the wall chunks are coming down maybe performance isn't so good and we have to change the back end tech. So I think like for me I just want to make sure like this is what you guys are going to see.

Steven: And it's that philosophy right that relates to how we show these core features.

Margaret: But we might show some wall destruction soon, so don't worry.

Steven: But particularly that principle of progress that we're making in development for these core features: When they're ready to be shown, which will be much closer to the alpha 1 date, which is gonna be around the end of a second second quarter. We'll be able to start showing out the content roadmap that you're making again to show these systems in a state that's going to be much progressed than what alpha zero was.

Maragaret: We know notes 3 is on that progression list. I'm getting memed so much for it. Even my first day I made sure that was in my AMAA. Yeah so I knew that see it is a huge system that I think the node system is one of my favorite systems.

Jeffrey: It's the system right. Like it is the thing that holds it all together right.

Steven: And you know some of the stuff that we may show is that we have Tad and Michael Bacon and Devon and the environment team, they have this - I don't know if you saw. Did I show you this.

Margaret: I saw what Devon's doing where you make a circle in the buildings appear, it's so cool. I was like I want that as a gif and I want to share that.

Steven: Yeah so you - showing how you know - as you guys know the node system is the crux of many of the systems. They all tie in to how the node progression works; and some of what the environment team has been doing in the tech behind the progression of those nodes from you know small crossroads to a giant metropolis is really in a great - from a technical standpoint looking position - but we need to make sure that it's polished in a in a showable state.

Jeffrey: We also don't want to promise something that we can't deliver right. Like you know when they're talking about the destruction of the walls, what we have internally is really awesome right now. But we don't want to show that to you guys in case we have to step back from it. Right like and that's kind of like that's where the line that we kind of like make for ourselves is that we'll show you something that isn't that great but if it's too cool right we don't want to show it and then have to walk it back. We don't want to get you excited about something that we you know can't necessarily fulfill. We hope to.

Margaret: We were all PogChamping about it. So but obviously there's a lot of cool things coming up in the future, so we hope that you guys stay tuned. Obviously if you're watching this now just so you know you can go ahead and hop in to the open beta right now. There's a blog post if you do exclamation beta in chat it will actually send you a link to our blog post that has all the information about the beta including how to register, how to download the game, how to submit bugs. We have a bug a new bug forum so if you have any bugs please submit through that forum. That is our newest form. It's gonna help with QA in order to make sure they have all the details that they need in order to reproduce the bug and then be able to give design or you know the engineers or artists they do details that they need in order to fix those issues. And then obviously we'll just keep you guys updated on the servers. I know we're gonna have some patches and here and there to fix some major issues that you guys are experiencing. We're of course getting those bugs and immediately trying to resolve them; and then of course our servers are going to be up until 10 p.m. PST... art we in standard time now? Oh my gosh. On Sunday night so we'll do some reminders. I have a one-hour reminder before that the servers are going to shut down as well as a reminder when it goes down.

Steven: And get in there and test in Apocalypse because that data is very important for us.