Monthly Live Stream Recap

I have started my journey on helping create content for the AoC family.

Although it was just co-contributing to @Simurgh 's AshesHQ, I am thrilled to help spread the word of this glorious game. And will continue to contribute however I can.

https://asheshq.com/2022/02/25/development-update-february-25-2022/

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SkylarckTheBotanist

Thank you for helping out! Appreciate you @Ashielf

SkylarckTheBotanist

Development Update: August 30, 2024
Present:
Steven Sharif: Creative Director
Margaret Krohn: Director of Communications
Discussion & Outline Summary

Community & Reminders
• The YouTube comment for this month lead Steven to explain that the archetype augmentation system could be rudimentary changes, like cooldowns, damage, or range. But they could also be very complex which would mean visuals and audio and flavor for a particular ability. They are not at that stage of development just yet though. Some will radically and fundamentally change some classes.
• The Dev Discussions for Storytelling with Archetypes is still up.
• There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future.
• A2 bundles are now available for purchase while supplies last.
• A2 will begin in October.
Citadel of the Steel Bloom and Firebrand Preview
• Jeremey (World Designer), The Citadel of the Steel Bloom was the location of order of the Steel Bloom prior to the exodus and apocalypse. They were a special unit formed by the Aelune Queen who believed in the portents and the omens beforehand. Chung and Trad (Design Team) , Ben, Jason (NPC designer), Bucky, Gunther (Senior Producer)
• The area was in the Harrowers area. The Harrower was one of the ancients lead slaughter, who led a team of marauders through this area during the exodus. They slaughtered the steel Bloom while they were locked inside the citadel.
• The event from the showcase takes place quite a few quests into a main story arc. The people who are currently residing in the Citadel right now are the sacred blades, they are a Kaelar defected military group who took over the Citadel. They have been dealing with cultist to increase their power. They are looking for a relic called The Orb of Ultimate Essence.
• They are trying to resurrect The First Lady of the Rose, who was on the Order of the Rose for the Queen. She is meant to help the party stop the Harrower.
• If the players get The Orb of Ultimate Essence, it is actually a dragon egg, when it is taken it spawns the Firebrand Dragon.

Firebrand Q&A:
• Is it intentional that in target of target the dragon health ticks down in the oppose direction compared to regular health bars.
o No that’s probably a bug.
• Please elaborate on Battle Res. Can you res in combat? Is it mana intensive?
o From a balanced perspective that is what A2 is meant to provide. Battle Res is meant to be a long channel ability that incurs a lot of risk for the healer, but also the player that is resurrected will come back with limited health and limited mana.
• Will world boss’s health be proportional to the number of players fighting it?
o The health will not scale, however as you add more players to an open world encounter, some behaviors may occur more frequently, such as more AoE abilities.
• Since bosses like these are open world, how will you address people that bring way more players than what the boss is designed for?
o To a degree adaptive AI to help zerg down certain content. In certain encounters where they want to keep the numbers at a specific value, they will use instanced content, but that will only be ~20%, but that won’t be until phase 3 of A2
• Are the boss droppings full items a place holders, instead of recipes or mats?
o Yes, the reward tables are not completed. They are just in a functional state. However you will get full loot drops from world bosses, but you will also get unique recipes and components.
Studio Update
• The team and testers are doing a great job leading up to A2.

Q&A

• The staff can be scene in game but not in the A2 phases, can you tell us if the staff will be in A2 and when?
o The other weapons and the staff will be throughout phase 3 of A2. There will be a lot of legacy features in phase 3. There has been a lot of work done on the animations but not necessarily the weapon skills trees, so make sure their identity is unique.
• Would bosses provide exclusive gathering materials for players with specific artisan profession skills such as hunting?
o There likely wouldn’t be exclusive materials, and there isn’t a plan for world bosses to interact with the hunting professions. That is just delicate to hunting prey, which will be divorced from the standard mob. In A2 there will be overlap with mobs, but in the completed game it is hoped that they are unique NPCs that you would track and hunt in order to collect the materials and resources.
• Can you explains what progression will look like and what the benefits or reasons are of leveling monsters (for monster coins)?
o The intent is that the more often you play that monster you will gain additional abilities, in order to ease players into the gameplay of specific monsters.
• There seems to be many ways nodes can hurt each other through PvP, are there ways to hurt rival nodes without a direct PvP, such as trading off resources, or NPC riots.
o There are less straight forward ways other than PvP, such as node commissions which would degrade trade alliances, land management systems, policy choices to limit choices the neighboring node can take, and vassalship.
• You had mentioned in the past that player held castles can be attacked monthly, does this mean that if a castle is not attacked monthly by players the NPCs would original try to retake the castle?
o They have discussed it, but from a design perspective it is not confirmed. The thought process is that if you didn’t have any attackers scheduled for the castle siege, then the castle would enter into an NPC siege, but that might not be the case.
• Since we are getting ships in A2, can we know more about the ship building process? Will we require carpentry for the hull, and tailoring for the sails?
o Yes there will definitely be interfacing with a number of different artisanship in order to create all the components necessary. Not just to build the ship, but also to equip the ship in its equipment slots. They will have more details as the naval system approaches, right now there are still discussion on where certain design aspects will live.
• In a multi boss encounter, how is player performance captured when it becomes a PvX encounter?
o There is a combination of tags system (for first tag), and then damage done, on a raid party basis and then which ever party exceeds the 50% has the loot rights for a period of time. After that period of time expires it becomes public loot.
• Can you elaborate on the Mendelian inheritance of the animal husbandry system?
o The traits are going to be relate to some stat on the animal stat block, they will also relate to abilities (such as passive benefits). This will be tied to genetic traits, and the system will overtime take it into account.
• During phase 2 you are going to test vassaling, would you be open to testing sieging your parent node?
o They don’t need to test that at that stage, what will be tested is the relationship between the too, is it negative or positive? The idea is that it is positive, so then they can look at changing the systems to ensure it is a positive relationship.

Ayeveegaming1

@SkylarckTheBotanist "• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future." I have applied for it but have not heard any response. Its been months.

SkylarckTheBotanist

Ravicus wrote: »

@SkylarckTheBotanist "• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future." I have applied for it but have not heard any response. Its been months.

Unfortunately that is all the information we have, Margaret said that they are waiting to hire the “Content Creator Community Manager” position before moving on to the next steps of the Content Creator Program, which may be after the launch of Phase 1 of A2

Ayeveegaming1

SkylarckTheBotanist wrote: »

Ravicus wrote: »

@SkylarckTheBotanist "• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future." I have applied for it but have not heard any response. Its been months.

Unfortunately that is all the information we have, Margaret said that they are waiting to hire the “Content Creator Community Manager” position before moving on to the next steps of the Content Creator Program, which may be after the launch of Phase 1 of A2

Thank you.

SkylarckTheBotanist

Development Update: September 27, 2024
Present:
Steven Sharif: Creative Director
Margaret Krohn: Director of Communications
Bill Trost: Director of Design

Discussion & Outline Summary

Community & Reminders
• The YouTube comment for this month lead Steven to explain that the relic system still has outstanding feature work, there are different types of relics, generally they are serviced through the cargo system, meaning you need a relic, merchant ship, or mule, in order for it to confine to the special grid of the cargo hold, where you then need to bring it to the node. Some relics, upon completion of a task, are sent directly to the node, but this is more relevant to common relics. There is some flexible in the relic system, which allows you to grant certain perks to certain groups. Intrepid will provide the players dynamism to create their own player driven experience. Relics are not meant to be kept by a single individual, they are meant to be deposited to the node.
• The Dev Discussions for AoE Forms & Function is still up.
• The next Dev Discussion is on Crowd Control.
• There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future.
• A2 bundles are now available for purchase while supplies last.
• A2 will begin on October 25th.
• Q&A after this month will be live and not pre-chosen from the forums.
Alpha 2 Guide
• A 3 day NDA test is starting this week with over 9k A1 testers.
• They have completed their Milestone 10 on Tuesday, and they have started their Milestone 11, which is to move the teams from Agile to Kanban to better prioritize bugs and build processes.
• The Map of A2 was shown.
• The Lawless Turquoise Sea Tropics and the Lawless Sandsquall Desert are meant to emulate the Lawless Open seas for launch.
• All artisan classes will be present at the launch.
• All Archetype Abilities that will be present at the start of A2 were all shown.
• ~1/3 of skills can be spec’d into at max level.
• They showed the Available weapons that will have full skill trees: Mace, Short bow, Longbow, 1HD sword, 2HD sword, wand and book.
• They showed a video on what it would be like to log into Verra on day one.
• The dead heartwood tree was show. It is a tree that taps into the essence of Verra. As nodes progress and prosper the tree itself will reflect that. They were a gift from the goddess of creation.
• There is in house sourced AI voice generation for NPCs, this is meant to be adaptive for translations as well.
• Loot drops from monster/boss kills is one of the primary methods that gear gets introduced into the economy.
• You can not kill quest givers and vendors in town.

Studio Update
• They hired 20 people over the last 10-12 weeks.
•

Art Update
• Brass Gauntlets
• Shamen goblin mask model
• Steel Bloom Armor

Q&A

• If two nodes are friendly towards each other, but a new mayor wants a war, how many mayoral war commissions would need to be completed to start a war?
o Mandates allows the mayor to degrade node relationships faster, but it still requires buy-in. So policies require opt-in from citizenships, if they do opted in then the mayor could skip the wait period.
• What are the systems for node atrophy?
o Node atrophy is another system is a system that is not yet implemented, but as players do things to build up a node, if players do less and less of that over time, services within the node may become inactive, some buildings may become inaccessible.
• If people want battlepasses will you make them?
o Battlepasses don’t really make sense with the monetization systems. As there are only cosmetics, no pay-convenience or pay to win. The intent is that cosmetics are different not better, than what is achievable in game.
• Is it possible for players to get stuck with broken gear if there is no repair shop or ingredients nearby?
o If you don’t repair your gear, then yes you are SOL, there are consumable repair items for in field repair.
• How will glint (a bound loot drop) be distributed if the loot drop is set to Master Looter.
o The glint is a systemically round robin lootable only.
• Will dungeons have their own maps with fog of war?
o There is not a plan for bespoke dungeon maps.
• Can you talk more about treasure maps and how they function compared to other games?
o It is currently a simplified temporary to put content in games for A2. Currently you acquire them, they have point(s) and the treasure might be at one of the points, and it may be timed. You may need to have consumable in order to dig your treasure up in order for you to role on the treasure table. Treasure maps are tradable.
• How manty gathering professions will most dungeons attack?
o All professions will have some looted relevance to POIs and Dungeons. The distribution of it is depending on world state.
• How do you plan to feasible deliver the other biomes before launch with previous time of development taking so long?
o The Riverlands is very much the a2 test bed, testing the development tools to generate content for the game. As the model is polished, they can better understand what needs to be made and create for each biome individual. They can then refine the outsourcing required for content.

SkylarckTheBotanist

Sorry for the delay on this, was busy playing A2!

Development Update: October 25, 2024
Present:
Steven Sharif: Creative Director
Margaret Krohn: Director of Communications
Bill Trost: Director of Design
Bryan Langford: Executive Director
Jacob Beucler: Lead Producer
Discussion & Outline Summary

Community & Reminders
• The YouTube comment for this month lead Steven to explain the alpha 2 spoiling the game launcher is also similar to open development spoiling the game as well. But the purpose is to engage with players to ensure that the content being created is the content players want to play. There is still a lot of road ahead. Ashes is a dynamic world so you can’t spoil everything for everyone at the same time. The essence of Ashes is the players driven by agency and dynamism, and as such some servers will experience new things that haven’t been spoiled depending on how the world progresses. And a lot of the lore is being hidden.
• The Dev Discussions for Crowd Control is still up.
• There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future.
• A2 bundles are now available for purchase while supplies last.
Alpha 2 Play
• They started in the POI outside the Bryarwood Farms.
• Clerics have had a significant update to their visual effects.
• The starting area are currently being bogged down, but as you get further out the lagging should fix itself.
• Even though they are showing just a small part of the world, it is still a large play area, phase 2 and 3 should have the biomes come up relatively quickly.

Q&A

• How much will your secondary class change your first?
o Steven recommends reading the Wiki because this has been answered in the past. But there is a significant amount of flavor change, that is the intent behind the class system.
• How do you find friends in-game?
o There are a lot of way, in A2 chat is your best resources. Discord, or other networking might be your best bet. Discord has a guild recruitment section. AoC is a non-faction based game so there are no limits to who you can befriend in your server. Long term there will be a friends list.
• Most other MMOs focus on end game, with leveling taking so long in AoC what will the content loop look like?
o They are focusing on making sure the leveling experience is fun.
• Can you add the ability to dual shield as a tank?
o No, not as a tank or as another class.
• Is the team still in a crunch?
o Crunch is only required when absolutely required not as a requirement and so the plan is to not be on a crunch.
• Will the HUD be resizable?
o Yes it currently is, but it will be even more customizable in the future. (Default to access edit control is the button below backspace (the vertical line)
• How many people/hours will it take to make a biome in full?
o In short, they are still finding good ways to accelerate work. They made a conscious decision to make the Riverlands to display what their gameplay loops will look like. This commitment to focus on one space doesn’t mean that other places aren’t being worked on.
• Is there a possibility for community art to make it into game?
o They foresee some competition to contribute as part of a contest to have fan made art make it in game.
• Are stealth abilities planned for mounts?
o Yes, that will be a type of ability for mounts
• How often do you think you will wipe in A2?
o As little as possible.

SkylarckTheBotanist

Development Update: November 27, 2024
Present:
Steven Sharif: Creative Director
Margaret Krohn: Director of Communications

Discussion & Outline Summary

Community & Reminders
• The YouTube comment for this month lead Steven to explain ambience and music roots you in the world, as can be seen in carphin, and firebrand battle music. Soon the turquoise sea and desert music will be implemented.
• The Dev Discussions for A2 First impressions is still up.
• There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future.
• A2 bundles are now available for purchase while supplies last.
Phase 2 Update
• Steven prefaced that the plans have changed for Phase 2 Release.
• The current plan for December 20th is now
o Tropics expansion and gatherables will be added, including the trees to be harvestable.
o Desert expansion will see more love than the tropics. Including natural environmental and gatherables.
o Dunir will be a playable race.
o Befallen Forge – New Dungeon
o Node sieges will be available
o Player Stalls – NOT an action house
o Treasure Hunts
o Archetype balanced
o Combat Balance
o Economy Balance
o Node Balancing – including buy orders
o Stretch Goal : Freeholds
o Stretch Goal: Vaelune Playable race – including narrative structures
Monster Coin Event
• They were able to stand a new mob type (giant) up in a week.
• They showed of a Monster coin even on Lyneth with multiple streamrs, including Narc, JamieKoas, Pirate software Grapplr, Vlhadus.

Q&A

• When the desert and the tropics expand will they still be law-less?
o As they develop, the region of law-lessness will move towards less developed areas.
• Will max level be changed for phase 2?
o No, but their leveling curve might be changed
• Will artisan class progression be changed?
o All things balance wise will be evaluated against feedback and data collection.
• Will node sieges be instance or Open world?
o Open world. However there will be a registration list, for those that are not registered you will be killed inside the zone.
• Will there be wipes after Phase 2 start?
o The goal is to not wipe. Some new servers might spin up at different times.
• Will logout timers be added?
o They are looking at adding this yes, might be before December 20th.

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