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

-T0Mb-

Where are the Dünir dwarves?

SkylarckTheBotanist

We know that the animal husbandry system will follow the mendelian inheritance from the Feb 2022 Livestream, could you elaborate on the number of gamete pairs the Pets, Mounts, Livestocks and Beasts of Burden will have?

Knoll

How fast are Alpha 2 updates going to be? Will there always be content for people to explore or will there be big dips in player count due to lack of content? If there are points with lack of content that is fine with me as I'll be exploring every class the game has to offer prior to launch but I am afraid that many people may become disinterested in the game if updates take too long.

Leonerdo

There have been a lot of questions about UI tools for managing guilds and combat and such. But what about crafting? Can we expect UI tools like shopping lists, resource locators, or visual recipe trees for multi-step crafts.

Antar

How feasible will it be to build Bard to be more DPS-oriented, ex. a Bard with good DPS and strong offensive CC in exchange for giving up the stronger group buffs/support skills? Swords Bard from BG3 comes to mind as an example of this.

Ozijak

Gday gamers ^_^ The Copium Clinic put out a video recently discussing the idea of 20% of dungeons being instanced and reasoned that a small portion of every dungeon is instanced for balancing hard encounters, instead of being just a few dungeons being entirely instanced. This would be incredible! Can we get some clarification on this? Thank you

savagelogic

Will there be an "unarmed" weapon category and/or a melee staff/Bo Staff playstyle.

Aliandria

With this month being the bard showcase, can you give us an idea of how the bard will augment the other archtypes when creating classes?

Dolyem

Can/Will foliage and cover hide names/health bars of players characters/minions from other players not in your party?

Godawful

How will quests be structured? Are we just going to get the same run of the mill “go here, kill this many..” & “go to this point, collect this & this & this” or are we going to get more thought provoking puzzle quests..things like, we are given a map with clues we need to decipher.

Gaul_

In case the player interest for A2 is much greater than expected, has Intrepid considered placing an upper limit on the maximum number of A2 keys in order to avoid a 'soft launch' situation later on?

Ace1234

@Laetitian

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.)

I think you are misunderstanding my question, so maybe I did make it too confusing. I have no problem with info being hidden as long as info that is necessary for making informed decisions can be acquired in some manner (otherwise your decisions have too much rng); my question is in regards to ensuring the act of uncovering info or drawing conclusion with said info is fun and interesting.

If the act of discovering essential information is tedious and boring (like grinding repetitively to get data that could have just been told to you, such as finding out the effect of an ability you unlocked) then I am distinguishing that from maybe a different system where discovering info is interesting and fun (like finding clues/making deductions using known information, such as noticing a mob has a certain ability that could be used to open a hidden path if you can train it over to an obstacle and trick it into hitting it, or something like that where the act of acquiring the information was interesting).

ReLamas

That's exciting news! Here's my question for the team:

Will the Bard archetype in Alpha Two have unique mechanics or abilities that allow it to significantly influence large-scale battles, such as sieges or node wars, and if so, can you provide an example of how this might work in gameplay?

RowniSciponi

How many gathering professions will most dungeons attract? 1-2, 4-5, or will it vary greatly?

Nozzle

What are your plans for server locations in Alpha 2? Will there be OCE servers?

TopWombat

Is there a way to build the Bard that isn't focused on music? I like the idea of buffing and support, but worry that playing music all the time could get annoying.

Otr

If people will want Battlepasses, will you make them?

Laetitian

Ace1234 wrote: »

@Laetitian

I will say, I personally disagree with the premise; I think lots of information should be hides.f.gg,voden, 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.)

I think you are misunderstanding my question, so maybe I did make it too confusing. I have no problem with info being hidden as long as info that is necessary for making informed decisions can be acquired in some manner (otherwise your decisions have too much rng); my question is in regards to ensuring the act of uncovering info or drawing conclusion with said info is fun and interesting.

If the act of discovering essential information is tedious and boring (like grinding repetitively to get data that could have just been told to you, such as finding out the effect of an ability you unlocked) then I am distinguishing that from maybe a different system where discovering info is interesting and fun (like finding clues/making deductions using known information, such as noticing a mob has a certain ability that could be used to open a hidden path if you can train it over to an obstacle and trick it into hitting it, or something like that where the act of acquiring the information was interesting).

Whether I misunderstood you depends on the degree of those definitions. If you just want to be able to play the game and judge the extremely roughly estimated functionality and strength of any given ability on its own, so you can move on to working on your own strategies right away, I agree.

Of course either way I agree that there should be cool hidden information to uncover, like the mob mechanics you're talking about, or advanced PvP strategies you can learn. Which is part of the reason why I think it's so important that players learn to prioritise their time on the aspects of the game that matter to them, instead of going on the quest to define the perfect meta.

But if you want to be able to calculate the damage difference between any potentially viable ten-ability-combos, including itemisation differences, so you can calculate the correct "best in slot", most efficient, build, or confirm the mathematical superiority of your personal version of your preferred streamer's build recommendation, while afk-ing at your skill trainer...

Then no, I understood all of that, and like I said, I think that should be tedious, for the reasons I stated. Because hyperoptimisation and min-maxing should not just be "the norm," just because players *want* to be the best.

I think I said it very clearly before: Players should make very deliberate decisions about whether "being part of the best" itself is fun enough for them to be worth the time investment, and otherwise be okay with just being "good enough" and finding their personal effective playstyle.
And by making those ideals as difficult to research as possible through obscure information, you incentivise players to think twice about defining, or following, "the meta." Because then the time investment for correct answers is so large that players have to make a deliberate choice whether they want to sacrifice their time, or just be okay with any playstyle that makes sense in theory, and that's "good enough," and achieves measurable *results* in the game, rather than on paper.

It's both more fun if players have to go out into the world to test their builds and confirm their decisions than if they can figure out the "correct" answer in a reliable spreadsheet, and it leaves more room for interpretation and thus encourages more different personalised meta varieties.

Essentially, obscure information is the only tool we have to defend ourselves against WoW metaslaves dictating the game's culture at the cost of variety and personal preference.

If you want to discuss this further, we should probably make a thread about it or do it in private messages, at this point.

Top

Is the system for diminishing return on crowd control implemented ?
Can you explain it in details?

TypoTek

Can we purchase the Voyager Pre-Order Pack?

Ace1234

@Laetitian

Ill put my response here in case it helps clarify the question for anyone else confused.


I think I understand how you are interpreting it now, im not talking about data mining exact values or anything relating to obtaining an unhealthy amount of information that could ruin the gameplay. I am talking about intended knowledge/data that the players are meant to have, which is at the designer's discretion to uphold the intergrity of the gameplay for a given system (such as the whole dps meter discussion). For the purposes of my question I am not giving a direct opinion either way on how much info the player should have available to them other than "whatever allows them to best make informed decisions that mimimizes rng and maximizes skill/fun gameplay".

My question is more in regards to the knowledge player's are intended to discover, and maximizing the fun ways of discovering that knowledge/info and minimizing the need to use tedious methods for discovering that knowledge/info.

Sengarden

Has the team begun designing profession mini-games yet? Cooking has always been an MMO obsession for me, and I’d love to be faced with an actual challenge in the kitchen or out in the field.

Reported

I've noticed all the skill trees seem to only have skills with max 1 point per node, is there going to be skills with a higher limit? Will some skills have a points cost? eg x skill needs 2+ points in y skill.

Dimitraeos

Zergs and mega guilds.

Are there internal discussions on anti-zerg mechanics such as uncapped AoE abilities or abilities that scale in damage the more targets they hit within a certain radius to punish excessive or uncoordinated zerging and force large guilds/groups to think more carefully about committing overwhelming forces into a fight?

aMeagerCarcass

Anyone can create a story. The bard however can create a story the people want to believe and spread.

Any chance bards can use that oratory skill this way. The intrigue
would keep things active.

InsertDisc

When can we hear more about crafting and crafting mini games (if theyre still a thing)

Apok

Can we get some insight on modifiers that show up on gear?

Liniker

Are server reservations still planned and could you elaborate on how that will work when it comes to availability and cost

Nyxxa

Can you be a fantastic raid healer whilst using a bow? Or will weapons still dictate metas even if they are "flexible"?

Cadac

Would all aspects of IntrepidNet be available for development of instanced areas also?