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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
The Discussion Round is celebrating our 6th anniversary with Steven - Do you have any questions?
Yokai Theater
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hey there all, as you may or may not have already heard by now Steven will be joining us on Sunday, September 10, 2023 at 12pm pacific time, for our six-year anniversary!
We are super excited to have Steven join us again and help us celebrate this milestone.
If you have a question you would like to see us ask Steven feel free to post it here, over on the reddit, twitter, or even in the Enveus discord and we will try to get to as many as we can in the time that we have.
https://discord.gg/enveus
We try not to add any repeat questions or things you can easily find over on the wiki. And we like to think you will ask the hard hitting questions everyone is hungry for.
So come on over and join us for some good talk with friends, drinks, and good time.
We are super excited to have Steven join us again and help us celebrate this milestone.
If you have a question you would like to see us ask Steven feel free to post it here, over on the reddit, twitter, or even in the Enveus discord and we will try to get to as many as we can in the time that we have.
https://discord.gg/enveus
We try not to add any repeat questions or things you can easily find over on the wiki. And we like to think you will ask the hard hitting questions everyone is hungry for.
So come on over and join us for some good talk with friends, drinks, and good time.
6
Comments
Games like Destiny have rare equipment (exotics) that offers unique abilities, skills, or effects that change, either somewhat or completely, how a class is played. Will there be equipment, either singular pieces or set gear bonuses, that offers unique abilities that change how a class is played? If so, are there current examples you can give?
A Tank wearing Phyiscal Armor is not going to play the exact same way as a Tank wearing Magical armor.
Probably a Tank/Tank would wear Physical Armor and a Tank/Mage would wear Magical armor.
But, also, a Tank/Tank wearing Physical Armor would probably use different Active Skills, Passive Skills and Augments than a Tank/Tank wearing Magical Armor.
The purpose of the question is to understand if solo gatherers who refuse to become combatants will have to run away from any player they see (even their own citizens) or if they can continue their gathering activity (cutting wood, mining, fishing, taming...).
Same for any player walking around with a mule (e.g. between a freehold and a node).
With that being said, I really want to point out that the mage showcase and the freehold update were extremely well structured and I hope these will be standards for future streams! Well done, keep it going
Thanks for letting us ask questions!
Happy anniversary
Hunting grounds are open-world PvP corruption-enabled areas that encompass most of the map.[2]
Hunting grounds refer to killing monsters or NPCs in the open-world.[2][3]
This also refers to contesting resources.[4]
One of the interesting components of Ashes of Creation and our flagging system is that it presents the potential for two conflicting parties to have open conflict in the open world over pretty much anything that they may want or disagree with; and if that pertains to a hunting ground, not just the caravan or the castles or the nodes or whatever, it can exist in that area.[5] – Steven Sharif
And I do not refer to open world dungeons where you go to farm in teams.
Steven did say previously that he wants PKing to be a rare thing, so I doubt that casual/pve players would have to run away at the sight of another player. And if they do cause the balancing is off - Steven will fix that.
Steven has the habit of dodging answers by going further away from the question and entering in details which were not asked.
I hope he will not start speaking about dungeons and PvX.
I think you're trying to ask about the players who'd spend most of their time in that first location, right? So in order to prevent Steven from answering a vague question vaguely, you should ask a super direct question and then see how exactly Steven will worm his way out of answering it (cause that's usually the main hint at the plan).
For Steven "hunting grounds" is a super huge umbrella term of "if there's a mob there - that's a hunting ground", so asking him if there's gonna be high lvls of PKing at pretty much any location on the map - he'll probably just answer with the standard "we'll balance the system in such a way that players don't experience griefing".
Flavors of shared mechanics
For mechanics that are shared across all archetypes like dodge and active blocking, will each archetype interface with them differently in terms of efficiency or flavor (like 50% vs 75% damage reduction for blocks)?
If so, could you give some examples?
Pets for everyone
What purpose is the battle pet system meant to serve that is worth compromising the class fantasy of summoners to some extent, by making the pet mechanic archetype-agnostic?
Fast travel transfer limitations
Are you planning to fully limit transfer of gatherables and materials equally across all "hard and soft" fast travel methods (e.g. teleports, airships, flight paths), or will they have different limitations?
NPC factions
Do you plan on having NPC factions, or food chain that will cause certain NPC groups to fight each other? Like large dogs or cats hunting deer, territorial beasts fighting for control, etc.
Mob behaviors
In the raid boss stream you showcased spiders standing off against players. Do you have plans to implement other similar features, like some diurnal/nocturnal mobs sleeping (and reducing their aggro range)?
AOE/Cleave
With players using melee weapons (with wide frontal cone attacks) being able to cleave down a large number of mobs at once, will there be mitigations to offset that, and prevent the PvE combat meta from becoming a so-called "AoE/cleave-fest"?
Gliding mount availability
Given how gliding mounts can allow you to avoid dangerous PvP situations and even bypass content in some scenarios, how limited will they be?
Open world difficulty scaling
How will you implement difficulty scaling for dungeons in the open world; an environment where multiple groups of varying strength and skill can fight multiple of the same dungeon's bosses at the same time?
Around how many quests (events/tasks/narratives) are planned for the launch of A2?
(I believe this number could give us a good indication of the content scope of A2 compared to A1.)
Team update
How big is the current team, and which open positions would be most important to hire for?
These kinda thing leave impression and unforgettableness when overcome
Q2) Can you elaborate a bit further on the design of family teleports? How do you design this mechanic to prevent people from exploiting it and bypassing many of the intended systems and mechanics in the game?
Q3) Will there be any tech that helps with the immersion in freehold cosmetics? For instance, a snowy skin in the desert loses its snow, or an oasis skin on an ice biome becomes snowy.
Q4) In the age of complete guides and full optimization, how do you plan not to trivialize every puzzle and mystery in your game?
Q5) Will the event system implement completely random events, or will they be set on a hidden timetable unknown to the player base, but predictable (for world bosses and smaller events)?
Q6) Since the game is so big, and there is no widely-available fast travel in the game, will we have a skill to find other players, for instance, a cleric divination skill that you would give a player name and it would tell you a direction(north, northwest) and how far (close, far, very far)?
Q7) What's the extent of the dynamic portion of the node system? Is the plan still that every time a node levels up or gets destroyed its layout/building placements/assets will differ?
Q8) Could you elaborate a little bit further on the happiness mechanic? Is it something solely controlled by policies or is it also controlled by some demand of resources by the node population?
Q9) What are your expectations for node trade agreements? Are you expecting trade agreements to be a long-term constant flux of resource trading, or do you expect node trade agreements to work in bursts, more of a case-by-case deal?
Q10) In the crafting system, what's the purpose of the molds? Is it to bypass the manual crafting minigame or a byproduct of this minigame?
Q11) Is the plan still for a node to contain only one racial aesthetic? There is a diminishing return system in place to stop all nodes from becoming human nodes, but with 9 different racial aesthetics, what are the odds of us seeing a nikuan metropolis? Is this going to impact players of racial minorities negatively?
Q12) If people's choice of node takes racial aesthetics into account, and that racial aesthetic changes later, isn't it a little weird for the residents? Have you given this any thought?
Q13) What do you have to say to people who ask for more transparency in the development? Do you and your community team feel responsible for managing people's expectations? Why don't you tell us at what point you are in the development of the systems and content? Why didn't you tell us beforehand that last month's update would not show a tier above village, or node transitions, like people were expecting?
Seeing a social media outlet with last activity being 2+ years old, casts some doubt on the game.
Please get a full time PR person.
Ok, I reformulated the question.
1. Will there be a system to orient players into their preferred content early on, so they can set personal goals (such as asking the player questions then having recommendations for them) or will they just kind of stumble upon the content they are interested in as they play?
2. How you would describe your vision in terms of the player's actual experience? Such as the emotional responses, or feelings/fantasies you are trying to deliver?
3. How would you describe your "core gameplay loop"?
4. For area/encounter design, did you take the approach of designing the art around the mechanics, or designing the mechanics around the art/theme for a given enemy/area?
5. Will all classes be able to deal with enemy encounters using non-combat strategies (similar to a rogue using stealth), if so, will you be able to adaptively switch between these strategies on the fly?
6. Aside from social friction between players, will you need to make morally ambiguous decisions when engaging with either the story arcs or the different npc factions?
7. How much freedom will players have in how they approach quests? Will quests have specific "solutions", or will there be many viable playstyles/approaches for clearing them?
8. are you planning on drawing inpiration using feedback and data from recently released or upcoming mmos/other games to improve ashes?
9. Are you okay with data mining, if not, are there planned measures to help prevent it?
10. Will there be any modified pvp experiences, such as different "game modes" the players can participate in, with asymetrical player roles?
11. How do you plan on making dialogue options fun and interesting? Will you ever have to reason with factions or npcs in any way?
Naval questions:
1. Will players need to move cannons around on the ships? We know there were balance concerns about having lower decks on ships, but have you considered using dynamic destruction to help balance line of sight concerns, to allow for cannoneers on lower decks?
2. can you shoot yourself out of ship cannon?
Crafting questions:
1. Will there be any kind of gameplay revolving around physical orientation/positioning of materials in relation to each other, such as in crafting/ship building? (kind of like in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom)
Movement/traversal questions:
1. The wiki says there will be class specific traversal abilities. What are some examples of these traversal methods?
2. How much will physics and environmental design factor into making traversal fun and interesting?
3. how free-form will climbing be, and how do you intend on making it fun and interesting gameplay?
World/exploration/story questions:
1. Is there an element of mystery to the lore, that you can't understand through the main quest line, but have to do further investigation into the world/lore to uncover the truth?
2. Will certain story arcs require piecing clues together and investigation in order to trigger them, or will all story arcs naturally play out through other means?
3. Is there a type of treasure in the world where you have to collect several different pieces/solve several different inter-connected puzzles, that are dispersed throughout the world?
4. Will treasures respawn to reward everyone who explores, or are they for the select few who find them first? If so, what is the incentive to explore as a newcomer on a server that has been already explored and looted for the most part?
5. How relevant will verticality be, such as fighting over strategic high ground or towers/buildings during sieges?
6. what is the intended navigation experience? are players going to have to get info organically within the world to get there bearings, or will most navigational info (such as locations and routes) be handed to the player through the UI/mini-map?
7. Can most NPCs interact/fight each other?
8. Will secondary classes provide additional utility skills?
9. What approach are you taking for the narrative/story arc design, as far as the quality of the story itself being told?
"Social interaction" questions:
1. Will there be an element of "moral conflict" between players from different religions?
2. Will there be assassination quests where one player needs to plan how to locate and sneak in to take down a high priority target (such as another real player), and the other player has to try to survive the attempt, in order to clear the quest?
3. Can you make wagers on mini games/duels?
4. Will there be a system that recaps "highlights" and important moments during battles?
5. How would you want the competitve scene to work within the game- such as in arenas/dueling, will there be a "standardized" way of playing or will there by customizable settings for the competitors?
6. Will there ever be a "kill-cam" of any kind, to see the perspective of the player who killed you?
7. will there be real-time battle commands for leadership/tactics purposes?
8. Can you always distiniguish between npc and player, or are there opportunities to blend in as an npc?
9. Is friendly-fire possible when grouped up?
10. will there ever be forced game chat to encourage social interaction?
Combat questions:
1. can you climb on and attack limbs of enemies?
2. Is the goal for all classes to have the same skill ceiling, or will some be harder to use and thus more rewarding/stronger than others?
3. will there be universal aerial attacks during jumps?
4. Will there be contextual abilities outside of the basic class kits (such as "finishing moves" or "ambushing moves" from above or behind)?
5. We know there are minimum and maximum ranges for skills- will there be "sweet spot" ranges or "perfect timings" or "charged versions" of skills, as a way of changing effects of combat skills?
6. how will underwater combat compare/contrast to land combat?
7. Has it been decided whether the "champion" balanced for 1v1's idea will be used for 1v1 arena combat? If not, how do you intend for 1v1s to be fair and fun experiences, regardless of the fact Ashes prioritizes balancing group combat?
8. In a more fluid and mobile combat system, what is your intended situational use of the slow and predictable melee comboes?
9. since there is dynamic difficulty, how will you know what level of difficulty you are facing in an encounter?
10. Will node siege defenses be set up in predetermined positions or will the defenses be more customizable in how they are set up and used?
11. will there be an arena/battlefield layout editor of any kind in the future?
12. Is it ever possible to be put in a "downed" state instead of dying when your health depletes?
13. For npcs that help players, can they be controlled or commanded to an extent or do they act completely independently?
14. Are there traps of any kind that can be set up during seiges or caravan routes?
15. Are all environments in the world designed to support the flow of pvp from the ground up or are particular locations more suited for open world combat?
16. How will tab abilities function, in terms of how much work is done for the player and how the associated counterplay works?
thats more than 1 question sir
Then pick your favorite :P
My question:
In organized PVP, how will we be able to tell the difference between friendly and enemy AoE spells? For example, how can I differentiate my teams blizzard or divine flare from the people we’re fighting?
One for every day of the year