⛰ May 2025 Development Update Livestream Discussion Thread ⚒

Vaknar

Glorious community,

Our latest Development Update Livestream has wrapped up, and we discussed some important new updates! This showcase featured a sneak peek of the Summoner Pet System Design, updates to Unreal Engine 5, and details of how we’re approaching BI data and cheating!

What were your favorite moments from the stream? What has you the most excited? Let’s chat below! 👇

Neurotoxin

This format is way better! If we could have livestreams like this going forward that'd be great. I feel like we get a lot more information hearing from staff panels about what's going on and what to expect in the near future. I also like to see and hear from the team, both to get more of the opinions and work from the teams themselves, and also as a way to highlight key members of the team so they can get some extra recognition for their efforts.

Comparing this to some recent broadcasts.... There's plenty of players and content creators who don't need to see in-game shenanigans to get an idea of what's going on, folks can just play it themselves or watch a content creator for gameplay and Q&A about it. To that extent, I don't think the in-world gameplay demos with dialogue over them is as focused, or as useful to current and future playtesters, as a steady stream of information like we got today.

Knowing that panels will tend to run long, less panels per show is probably fine. If you know what teams will be features as the panels in the next show, and what you'll be talking about, that creates an opportunity to ask players what they want to know about the systems to gather more questions, or possibly to address a misunderstanding that players have based on the questions they ask.

I hope to see more like this in the future!

Kinda waiting for that econ pass though. I like the idea of high drop rates for common gear so people can arm themselves as they level, but artisanry to be the main driver for quality improvements beyond common.

Still not sure how 64 Weeping Willow wood has to be consumed to make one beefsteak sandwich. Does it come with a table and chair that I sit at to enjoy it?

Anyway, good show, I'm looking forward to more like it!

Ludullu

Please do this format waaaaay more. We got direct and straightforward discussions about important things, rather than devs trying to answer question while also playing a game. We also get to see more of the team this way, which is always nice. And on that note BRING ZACK BACK AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. His energy was amazing and his insights were great.

As for interesting moments from the content itself - love me an L2 summoner. That's about it.

Azherae

I really liked this stream, and it really made me feel 'reconnected' to what Ashes of Creation is trying to be.

Not really much to say on it because it was just good, and I'm sure everyone on the BI side knows my biggest concern with this sort of thing, due to my longterm biases in the BI 'industry'. I'm sure you don't need to hear this:

"Please don't fall into the trap of building things based on the data of only the interactions, when there are always so many chances for players to purposefully ignore systems because they're pain points."

I want to say 'I don't think this would happen' but I bring it up to pre-empt(?) those I know who do absolutely believe this is happening based on the state of certain things that have been allowed to go live.

Anyway, just do your best, it really was a great stream, especially for this stage. We definitely won't be sad to see the 'cool update + Devs having fun ingame' return in a bit (even the next perhaps) if you have something to show off, but these have a meaningful place too.

EDIT: Also FF11 SMN is the best.

Dezmerizing

I agree with Azherae's final point. Having some more relaxed streams while devs are having fun ingame has its place and I am hoping to see some of that when you show the full summoner reveal, and potentially while you showcase reworked classes/abilities/talent trees (perhaps being recorded in advance in some occasions to not steal away the devs attention too much?)... But for the intents and purposes of the stream, I thought this was a great setup.

I am very interested to see which direction you guys go with the summoner. I was hoping for a more Age of Conan-like summoner (at least I hope I am remembering correctly) where you have a kind of "summoner points" that you can use to either spend on a lot of cheap minions, or spend more/all of them for a single or a few stronger minions, but I am very intrigued to see where this goes. Not that summoner will be my main, mind you, but I have plenty of friends whose future in AoC might hang on the summoner archetype. :')

Saraphita

I much preferred this format over the streams from the past several months. More specifically, I don't think it's particularly valuable to do a livestream that talks about new changes that were just introduced and are already live in Alpha 2. What is more interesting is what changes are upcoming (i.e., here's what we're working on right now that we hope will will be available to you to test within the next few weeks).

As part of that when talking about upcoming changes, I think it's helpful for people to hear from the Intrepid members implementing/overseeing various systems and providing insight that help reset and realign expectations for testers. I think it's very valuable to community members to hear information like why changes were implemented, what problem(s) they were trying to solve when implementing them, what the issues are with the changes that got implemented (i.e., acknowledging you're not happy with the current version so that testers don't mistakenly think you're satisfied with it), what it is that you're try to achieve (so that feedback can be more targeted to let you know whether or not you did achieve it), etc.

Settite

Loved the stream. 10/10. What people want is information as opposed to watching devs run through a pocket dungeon or sail around on a boat trading shots since those are things we can already see live in the alpha*. The information allows us to have insight into the inner workings of Intrepid studio. We get to hear exactly what the intent is with certain choices which is worth so much more when we're in such a volatile alpha state. Oh and please keep lawless zones for launch in some way shape or form.