Next Livestream + Q&A Submission - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 11am Pacific

Vaknar

Glorious Ashes of Creation Community!

Our next livestream featuring an Alpha Two Bard Archetype Preview will be Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 11am Pacific! (Click here to convert this to your local time.)

If you have a question for our team, then you’re in the right place! Please submit your question for our development team in the thread below, and we'll select 10 of them at random to answer during the end of our livestream. In order to accommodate a variety of questions from our community, please only post ONE question below - the more direct, and succinct the better (think one to two sentences)! Submissions end Monday, July 29, 2024 at 11am Pacific, so we can select your questions before the broadcast.

We'll see you soon for our development update livestream! twitch.tv/ashesofcreation

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Edit:
Hello again, glorious Ashes of Creation community! Thank you to everyone who stopped by and shared a question with us for this month’s stream. Q&A submissions are now closed, and we’ll see you at 11AM Pacific on Wednesday for our livestream!

twitch.tv/ashesofcreation

Ace1234

How relevant will knowledge/deduction gameplay be across the various systems and will you try to discourage the more tedious methods players will use to acquire data/knowledge? For example, interesting data gathering like needing to observe specific enemy mechanics and transfer that knowledge to progress in a different area vs. tedious data gathering like grinding to find out the effects of a skill you might want to use.

SonicXplosion

As a tank that doesnt want to be main-tanking and holding aggro in a 40 man raid, how can I utilize my archetype kit for raid damage mitigation?

Senko

Fox Tulnar when?

NyceGaming

Is it still planned to give players a breakdown of expected content and features available at the launch of alpha 2?

Vyril

Will guild wars allow for non-citizens to influence a node war by fighting under the guise of guild wars with enemy guilds that are also citizens of one of the nodes?

arkileo

Will we be able to progress in multiple schools of augmentation at the same time to mix and match augments from the full breadth of a secondary archetype, or will be we locked to a single school?

ExiledRanger

Is it possible to discuss what your thoughts would be on how the Bard Archetype would possibly augment the other archetypes?

Also, what are your thoughts on tipping Bards in-game?

Tenguru

Why didn't the Seven want the Ancients to join them in the Celestial Plane?

Aniion

If a player gets hacked and loses their items/gold, is there a mechanism to return them to the player once they get their account back?

Drizzel

To what extent do you plan to provide Augments at the launch of Alpha 2?

MeLlamanOsaka

Dear Steven, every month I ask about my tulnars and every month you leave me in suspense, in the Sark World community we fantasize about the tulnar culture, their architecture, their armor and their looks, when will you show us something about them? Kisses your great admirer

Ludullu_(NiKr)

What will happen to the siege attacker side if the owner guild has 250 members and one of the attacker guilds successfully cast the Seal to move ownership of the castle to themselves?

Dadrick

From an RP perspective. Are the portals one way? can we contact people staying on Sanctus by courier or such?

Laetitian

Ace1234 wrote: »

How relevant will knowledge/deduction be across the various systems and will you try to minimize the more tedious methods players will use to gather data/knowledge? For example, interesting data gathering like needing to observe specific enemy mechanics and transfer that knowledge to progress in a different area vs. tedious data gathering like grinding to find out the effects of a skill you might want to use.

@Ace1234
I think you have to rephrase this if you want the question to be understood. What does "minimise the more tedious methods" mean? Discourage them? Obstruct their pursuit? Reduce their relevance and thus players' requirement to pursue them?

Dygz

[QUESTION] How do Backgrounds relate to Racial Augments??

KatoPao

hello steven
I hope you are well.
will you be selling goodies soon?
mug, teeshirt, cap, statuettes, plateau game, card games, ect ...

jmann

With the Alpha 2 right around the corner, you've said we will get access to the character creation before hand.
I would like to be able to use the character creation tool, and then download or convert our character model to an STL file for 3d printing.
Is this something that would be possible or could be added for us?

Doozer

Will the monthly streams format or frequency change with the release of alpha 2 servers?

PaiPlayer

I believe in the "risk versus reward" system, but in this specific case of Caravan attacks the only real risk that the attackes will have is losing some XP, inventory items and/or equipment durability, which is not even close to the loss that the owner of the Caravan will have if he loses it as the amount of effort he need to build the Caravan and to fill it but, moreover, all human resources involved to defend it.

Attacks to Caravans are, effectively, murder followed by robbery. Why, then, are those involved in the caravan attack not punished with Corruption? I mean, why there's a need of it to be an "event"?

InsertDisc

You said that artisan systems are a viable endgame option. Every material will be available in the world, or will some material be locked behind a raid or dungeon?

Fantmx

Will the bard class have tune twisting or something similar to what the original EverQuest bard class had?

Veil Mistwarden

(Repost as Suggested)

You had mentioned in the past that Player-Held Castles would be attacked monthly.

Does this mean that if a Castle is not attacked monthly - by players - will the NPC Monsters which originally held the Castle, attempt to retake their Castle from these Players? If so, will this be a Monster Coin event that Players can join to assist the NPC Monsters in reclaiming their Castle? (please do this)

Thank you!

Ace1234

@Laetitian

I think you have to rephrase this if you want the question to be understood. What does "minimise the more tedious methods" mean? Discourage them? Obstruct their pursuit? Reduce their relevance and thus players' requirement to pursue them?

Sorry, by that I mean to not include those tedious methods in the design as much as possible, through providing sufficient information to where data acquisition efforts aren't necessary.


@Vaknar
Is my question too confusing?

Clonage

During Alpha1 we've seen some utility/support skills on the Mage archetype like "Black Hole", "Drain Essence" and "Gift of the Magi". But sadly we haven't seen these specific utility/support skills in the Mage kit since.

Will we be able to build a "Support" Mage(without 2nd Archetype) where it's role is to help the group with utility & support skills, instead of focusing on DPS?

Garcimili

Regarding XP debt and stat dampening, are their plans to have these turned off during progression raiding like they are for objective-based PVP? Typically when you're first learning a new raid boss, it will take dozens of wipes while you chip away at progress on the fight, learning the mechanics, and building a strategy, and this will be very counter-productive to this progression. You say that the Cleric's Resurrection skill "will return a percentage that would have been accrued as experience debt", but does this include stat dampening as well, and how much will be returned/mitigated by the Resurrection skill?

Vaknar

Ace1234 wrote: »

@Laetitian

I think you have to rephrase this if you want the question to be understood. What does "minimise the more tedious methods" mean? Discourage them? Obstruct their pursuit? Reduce their relevance and thus players' requirement to pursue them?

Sorry, by that I mean to not include those tedious methods in the design as much as possible, through providing sufficient information to where data acquisition efforts aren't necessary.


@Vaknar
Is my question too confusing?

It might help to simplify it as much as you can. The clearer, more concise, and easier to understand, the better chance you'll have of getting the answer you're looking for from Steven (if it happens to be selected for the stream). Let me know if you'd like assistance with rewording your question or finding a new way to phrase it

Ace1234

@Vaknar

Thanks, I changed it a bit, seems to make sense to me but if it doesn't from your perspective lmk where the confusion is.

Neurotoxin

Will Bards have the opportunity to specialize harder into tasks they wish to support better, like Caravan/Ship buffing and reinforcement, pacifying enemy aggro range, speeding up summoner rituals, improving gathering interactions nearby, and other specific combat and non-combat tasks?

Hjerim

Can you give an update on your mobile app development, and in which way we can potentially enrich gameplay through it?

Laetitian

Ace1234 wrote: »

@Laetitian

I think you have to rephrase this if you want the question to be understood. What does "minimise the more tedious methods" mean? Discourage them? Obstruct their pursuit? Reduce their relevance and thus players' requirement to pursue them?

Sorry, by that I mean to not include those tedious methods in the design as much as possible, through providing sufficient information to where data acquisition efforts aren't necessary.

@Ace1234
"How important will ingame data collection be for successful theorycrafting, and do you plan on making the tedious parts less necessary? Such as providing enough information that players can avoid grinding to figure out the basic numbers to find builds and rotations, and instead focus on interesting strategies and enemy mechanics?"
(Not sure if I've 100% understood your examples, but I think this might be a useful draft for your rephrasing.)

I will say, I personally disagree with the premise; I think lots of information should be hidden, and the players who don't want to do the tedious work should just learn to be okay with doing the best they can. Too many MMO players assume min-maxing and hyperoptimisation should just be the norm, without questioning if being part of "the best" is fun enough for them to be worth the time investment. By hiding more data behind obscurity, players are more encouraged to think twice about what their priorities really are, and realise they'd actually rather just go with what feels good and logical to them, than find the "correct" choice.)