Next Live Stream + Q&A Submission - Friday, August 28, 2020 at 11AM PDT

LieutenantToast

Glorious Ashes Community!

Our next live stream will be Friday, August 28 at 11AM PDT! (Click here to convert this to your local time.)

For this upcoming stream, we'd love to gather some questions from you to answer live! Please submit your question for our development team in the thread below, and we'll select 10 of them at random to answer at the end of our live stream. In order to accommodate a variety of questions from our community, please only post ONE question below, and the more direct/succinct the better! Submissions end Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 11AM PDT so we can select your questions before the stream.

We'll see you next week for our development update live stream! https://www.twitch.tv/ashesofcreation

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Edit:

In case you missed it, our August Development Update Live Stream is now available on our YouTube channel!

Including early pre-alpha footage of hybrid combat, details on castle sieges, node art progression and more! https://youtu.be/8WQ_BBwK5LA

psym3x

Are the combat pets all DPS oriented or are there Tank, DPS, Healing and Support variants? Can I be a healer that has a combat pet that aids me in my healing or provides mana regen?

Hjerim

To our knowledge, Intrepid exceeded the estimated cost of production of $30 million a while ago. Steven himself have largely been funding this game up to this day. Is this a sustainable situation for Intrepid for possibly one or two years more development time - and now also with the added cost of self-publishing in EU?

Karthos

Will weather effects at sea have an impact ships, such as wind, rough sea, ice, ect?

Jahlon

What appearance do freeholds take on; are they like in-node houses and it changes with the racial architecture of the node, do they take on the racial appearance of the owner, or does the owner get to choose?

Jane

Is there gonna be server wide announcements for the first kills on Dungeon, World and potential Hidden Bosses on launch day? As well as dungeon time records in general? Perhaps with the party members's usernames shown in the announcement?!

Liniker

When a corrupted player gets killed - can they drop gear from their inventory - or only what they have equipped?

neeko2lo

Good evening from Munich, Intrepid.

- Most People I talk to are worried about the combat of Ashes. As someone not knowing the insights of game developement, why did combat take a backseat after the Apocalypse testing?

(Bonus: When is the Content Creator Program reopening? I would love to help)

Havel

Can you clarify if not using your archetypes preferred weapon will reduce/limit the weapon skills you can use? For example, If I use a mace+shield as a tank would I be unable to use the combo skill since I am not using the archetypes preferred weapon?

Orangejuice

Thank yall so much for doing this Q&A!

How do you plan on supporting the longevity of AoC? It seems like most MMOs tend to die within 3-5 years.

-Orangejuice

gunmandude2

Will the skin of a player's mount affect their hitbox in PVP?

KvastN

You have previously talked about the different “power positions” such as mayors or kings/queens, how do you plan to circumvent players buying/selling accounts in these positions? This would ruin the whole philosophy behind the “no P2W” with making these accounts tradable.

Tyrakkel

Will narrative quests feature persistent NPC's that are not dependent on the node system? In other words, will our immersion in the story be driven more by character stories or raw world building?

Gui10

Can we expect information on archtype augments and racial augment before alpha1?

Eepop

When is the next interview with Steven and Jahlon? The last one was amazing.

Chiranome

Do you have any plans on making a berserker class? (Kinda like a DnD barbarian) If not, will there atleast be rage-based abilites?

Nabz1635

Jahlon questions Steven again?

PlayerOneTriss

say you want to change to crafting from gathering but your a master in gathering will you be able to "downgrade" gathering to below master so you can ascend master into crafting? obvs you would run into issues of people swapping out to often so maybe a substantial monetary cost to do so to balance it out or a cap on how many times you can do it?

Veil Mistwarden

In Final Fantasy XI, the Mob AI was very advanced for it's time.
Elementals spawned with weather change and aggro'd if you cast magic, Undead spawned at night and immediately aggro'd weakened players, or low HP players. Some Mobs also aggro'd by Sight, Sound, and tracked by Smell too. There were also in-game items and Spells to protect yourself from them, will AoC Monsters throughout the world have similar advanced behavior AI, thank you!

MrLaggy

Ever consider the option to steal from players i.e. pickpocketing? Say the Rogue Rogue build levels to the highest rank in the thieves guild and now they get the option to pick pocket rares and below or something.

Tyras

We have heard about the special ability Rogues have during dungeon exploration, in finding hidden rooms. What are the special abilities the other Classes are getting/ or are planned to have?

Oddjob

Steven and Jahlon interview pt. 3 when?

HydroX

Will classes be affected so much by the "Racial buffs" so there will be certain metas? example: a meta where tanks play Ren'kai's?

Kaelang

Who will handle the support for Europe, my.games or IS? lol

With the number of mount cosmetics, how will their hitbox's differ, could this be seen as P2W with larger mounts / smaller mounts being hit differently?

How many tiers of aquatic mount are planned?

ultrared

In animal husbandry will creatures only be able to be bred a set amount of times?
Say I have a Mare and a Stallion.
Will the stallion only be able to breed 3 times before he can no longer breed, or will there be a cool down?

In addition- Can animals be "Fixed" before being sold? Can they be "Neutered/spayed" so that other players may buy it for looks but not breeding purposes?

Xyphien

Since alpha 2 will be on 24/7 until release, and from what I've gathered will then be used as the official test server. Does that mean those who will use the Alpha 2 test have to log into another server for Beta 1 and 2? Or will it be on the Alpha 2 server? Will the A2 server be upgraded throughout the time it's up to make way for it being the test server, and if so why should we move over to the B1 or B2 servers if A2 has the same features added? We can still report bugs, and figure out exploits/etc. on the A2 server.

Desorda

Next Jahlon Interview, when?

Galvyr

At launch, would it be more strategic to stay near the starting areas or run off to the other side of the map and start leveling up a node?

wastedzebra

I'm still quite confused on how animal husbandry and taming work. Let's say there's a rhino mob out in the world; would you use your taming to tame it, bring it to a freehold with a stable, and then someone with animal husbandry can breed it with another random animal to create a brand new one in the vein of Impossible Creatures (the 2003 game)? That's what lazypeon made it seem like in his video.

I assume certain animals only have a couple of other animals they can combine with, or you'd have an incredible number of assets to design for all the combinations

What I really wanna know is will we be able to create our very own snorse by combining a snail and horse?

Daybreak

res

Tyrantor

Good morning IS team and thank you for you're consideration to answer our questions. I'm going to list several please choose any of which you're comfortable answering. Thank you in advance regardless if you choose mine.

1) Siege Mechanic: Would IS consider pre siege commencement events for buffs, rewards, titles etc I.E. Military Node Mayor and Siege leader begin the siege by picking players to duel (1v1(or other vs ratio)) and then the winners of this fight can continue to challenge the opposing side until some variable or condition has been met and then the war begins. - The theory here is that the military node mayor is decided by combat, it would be a unique feature to allow single or small group combat to highlight the siege before battle that could be spectated inside of the arena in the city. The winners of their individual fights would gain some reward or recognition/title for their fights possible expanded on if the same person(s) are able to win multiple engagements/all, if Mayor and Siege leader agree to 1v1 possible siege wide buff/debuff for winning/losing respectively.

2) Bounty Hunting: How accurate will the corrupt player map awareness be? Is this going to be pin-point accurate ie. Behind this tree/bush. OR More general location ie. Zone XYZ.
(In terms of Risk/Reward I believe it should not narrow down the location more than a zone to allow for a “hunt”).

3) Character Stat/Skill Growth: Will there be attribute point allocation beyond base race at creation to give unique build opportunities. At each level gain will the stats be automatically applied or will the game allow creative stat distribution for developing characters designed around specific play styles? Will there be any attribute or skill/power runes or other items available at character creation or late game (character binding not weapon/armor enhancements) that will help differentiate characters. i.e. +30 to axe skill, +25 to crafting(sub crafting), +30 to INT, Dex, Str etc.

4) Removing Corruption: Once a player goes corrupt would it be considered for any combat based kill (of other corrupt or combat flagged characters) to gain some removal of the corruption buff/reduction of corrupt penalty. Essentially allowing someone that became corrupted to PvP their way out of the corruption instead of forcing PvE questing or death. Since the corrupt player would be at a disadvantage due to the corruption debuff it seems like the risks to continue pvp should gain some reward, if they are no longer attacking non combatants.

5) Player Driven Quest/Task System: Allowing players to create quest/tasks for different scenarios I.E. Crafting materials, Bounty Hunt for non corrupt players, Player sponsored Caravan quest (defense). Players offering the quests will have to escrow the reward, all quest items have to be turned in face to face/proximity for quest to complete. (note: While all of these items could be handled in game chat (WTB: 100 Iron ore etc) it seems like a great system could be built in game to cut down on random in city shouts - just the flash back to early EQ days and other MMOs)).