Talk:2018-04-20 Dragon Blogger - Gameplay and interview with Jeffrey Bard

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Transcript

0:07

Hey guys Eddie back again we're here with Jeff one of the lead developers for Ashes of Creation it is lead developer right one of the?

Lead designer

Lead designer

Yeah

Sorry

It's all good

So we're going to do a bit of gameplay but I just wanted to go over a few things on the game mainly kind of what inspired you or what inspires you daily and what are you doing there?

I take a lot of my inspiration from the first moment that I started playing MMOs right like there is sort of first love that you have in this genre it's usually your first game because it sort of opens your mind to what's possible in a MMO it's such a different experience than a single-player game and my first one was Anarchy online it was sort of like a revolution in my head of what a game could be and so I imagined a lot of stuff could be possible in this game it really ended up not being possible so I wrote a story in my head of what I really wanted to be playing and that game wasn't that it kind of fulfilled a role for me during that time but that idea of what a MMO could be is sort of what we work with every day here in Ashes of Creation like what can you do in an MMO that's different from from any other game is based on what kind of community has what kind of players you have and sort of how they work together and so we really want to create systems in this game people together that create friction that create opportunities for stories that are bigger and better than anything I can personally write as a designer right so so we want to create worse recapture that magic that MMOs used to have back in the day and bring the genre forward in a way that kind of reimagines what MMOs could have been had they taken a different direction a long time ago

2:12

There are a lot of games out now and coming that don't charge you a monthly fee which is cool because you know you either get the game free or maybe pay a little bit up front for the game and then its free you might be able to buy a buff which is not cool in my opinion like when I say a buff you know like a hammer that nobody has incredibly powerful kind of makes it horrible for everybody else a lot of people quit on that and then there is other guys that will make it totally free if you want to buy a shirt that has your name on it you gotta pay money for it but then the whole MMO thing where you have to pay per month there's kind of a benefit to it im a cheap bastard myself but there's kind of a benefit to it because there's typically going to be longevity there's typically going to be lots of updates sometimes addons just so many different things that maybe the free guys won't do as often there's there's that value on the game now unfortunately I haven't done as much research as I should Ashes huge guys

It's gigantic

I'm interviewing so many different people and actually a few interviews I've been oh yeah so this game does that no oh that was another one that I'm going to do so sometimes you get mixed up in it and that was weird the lights just changed anyway so unfortunately I didn't do a whole lot of it but the game looks beautiful you know he knows a lot about it so I'm kinda gonna put a lot of it on you hopefully you don't mind

That's okay it's an interview okay its unprepared

Extremely unprepared my fault sorry guys so you know I've walked in and started a little conversation before and so I've been looking at the screen the graphics look amazing so I don't know if you want to take us into the game or maybe talk a little bit more about it.

Sure so I'll talk a little bit about it and then I'll try to bring you in the game this is our alpha zero level we just launched it in December late December of last year it's kind of our tech alpha so we're getting we're preparing for our big alpha launch that's coming in quarter four of this year ish but this is basically a way for us to get players in really bang on our tech make sure that the login flows work that are persistence works that all of the things that go wrong during a launch all function the way that we expect in a live environment not just in a test environment so this is here for us to get players in they can do some stuff the contents not really there it's still a big world four-by-four zone 16 square kilometers and there's stuff for people to do there's monsters to kill there's five different dungeons there's questing and then most importantly our node system is there in place ready to work so yeah that's kind of the short and sweet this right here is our sort of where players start

Let me bring you guys in closer

5:44

Sure alright so this is where players start they enter this portal from another world called Sanctus Sanctus is a place of no magic low technology and players are sort of the first expeditioners that are coming through this portal into this world of Verra

So sorry to cut you off

No worries

Is there a story to why the world is the way it is now?

Yes I can get into it a little bit I can set the stage and that's about it and then go forward from there the the main sort of story and how things got to where they are now is that long long long time ago everybody lived on a planet called Verra something happened something cataclysmic happened that forced people from that world to another world called Sanctus vera is a place of really high magic Sanctus is a place with no magic whatsoever so people escaped through these portals into the world of Sanctus they had to rediscover technology because so much of their current technology was based on magic so they had to refigure out how to interact with the world thousands and thousands of years go by a long dark age passes this history that I just told you falls into myth and legend after this time passes these portals reopen and the players are going to take the part of people who are come through those portals once again back to the world of Verra rediscover that magic rediscover their history and try to figure out what happened to this world to force them out of it

Also they are back on their original planet

Yes

Okay that's awesome

7:22

Yeah so they'll step out into this world they'll get introduced to it through some of these quest givers they'll talk to you they'll wave to you you'll level up there's ten levels available in this this this playthrough for classes you can build a balanced party with it and you can do a bunch of stuff that you can do in a MMO so what I'm going to do right now is kind of do a quick run through my speed is really high right now it's GM speed so I'm just gonna kind of take you through the world of Vera as it is right now so as you can see it's a huge world of its full population and the main thing that differentiates us from other MMOs is that we have a living breathing reactive world that means that that means that so our world is separated into zones which are then separated into what we call nodes nodes are sort of invisible zones of influence that listen to everything that a player does so as players gain experience from killing things gain experience from doing quests gain experience through crafting things the node is also gaining that experience once a node gains enough experience it levels up and then starts to attract NPCs to it and so what you see here is sort of the wilderness of the world it's a blank slate when players first arrive one on day one when we turn on the servers there's going to be just this just a bunch of wilderness monsters dungeons but very little in the way of civilization it's up to the players to kind of decide where and when and how civilization evolves so I'm going to bring you over to one of our nodes -

9:20

So actually as you're saying that so day it opens up it will be like this so let's say I start playing the game a year later I'm not gonna get this I'll get a kind of different environment

Right you'll get a -

More evolved environment

Yeah it'll be it'll be more evolved they'll be more yeah so it'll be more more developed so there will be places for you to go events that are happening the world will be very different on day 60 than it is on day zero we're gonna keep track of the history of the world so that we can kind of tell people the story up to the current day so a player who's brand new who's come in and at the six-month mark can take a look at you know each server what each server has done kind of how each server is tackled the storyline and they can decide for themselves like what community they want to join what what version of the world that they want to take part in

That interesting

Each server is going to be very different from other servers as time goes on

10:37

That's interesting so back to the day when I used to play WoW every server was essentially the same the same except you had different people playing so here every node or node is what you're calling it right?

Right

Okay every node is essentially different there might be some similarities one is leveled up much higher one hasn't been touched much so they'll get a different experience after they've been let's say I started playing this game I've been in there for four months can I go to another node?

Yeah you go anywhere you want to

Nice

Now each node as it levels up it starts to lockout nodes around it so say this node gets to level 3 it will prevent any neighboring nodes from leveling past 2 right as nodes level up not only does civilization move in but the monsters around it also change so there'll be roads built between different nodes that have developed those roads will be safer areas than areas further on in monsters will level up monsters with Delevel new monsters will come in so based on what nodes develop changes the ecology of the area which changes the experience of the area different quests proc based on what race is ascendant so you're gonna get a different story as well

The monsters I see today probably won't be the same monsters I see four months from now

Correct in that area right like it's it's maybe there's a bunch of demons in this area to start with right it's it's a craggy undeveloped monstrous place right it's dangerous players come in they start clearing out those monsters a city forms and those demons can't stay there anymore right maybe it's a religious node that particular node has the power to sort of keep demons at bay right those monsters might move out of that area and go to another wilderness area that they work for so so the again the idea is to keep any given day changing we don't want people to log in just to do dailies we want them to log in because they want to see what's new in the world

12:51

So and then another great point you can build homes you can build whatever?

Right so once a node starts to level up once it gets to the village level people can start putting down freeholds freeholds are basically a plot of land where you can kind of build whatever you want you can put housing down there it you can put social buildings down there you can create a little industrial complex down there based on what you want to do is player

That's awesome

So yeah it's it we want to give people lots of tools to tell really cool stories between players and give them the opportunity to shape their world

A lot of what you've told me so far has been really unique and that now especially you can build your home your business your community can other people come and destroy it?

Yes they can

That's awesome

So we are we are a PvX game and we want so everything hangs off the node system the node system is our core and then everything kind of feeds around that the nodes function as an engine that provides content for the PvE side and then the PvP side is what kind of creates the dynamism of it right so when a town is leveled and it's as an Elf town let's say it offering Elf amenities and Elf quests and I'm an Orc and I don't get the kind of benefit that I want to from that right I can get my dwarf buddies and my human buddies to come siege that town bring it low unlock the other nodes that are around it and start trying to build an Orc city so so again it's like this feedback loop that keeps content changing keeps the world changing and just creates really cool stories

14:34

That's that is truly unique going back to Wow Wow the last real MMO I played okay it consumed me

It was a great game I played a lot too

It really ate me up I won't go into what happened but a lot happened you went to different areas the server I would always go to was Illidan and everybody knew where the town was everybody knew where everything was after a short point and you can raid it but it didn't really matter I didn't do anything right here I can raid it I can pillage and destroy I can I can do anything I want get rid of it build my own right that's amazing

Yeah and it's it's again it's like that is what I pictured back in the day right like like that's the ultimate promise of the MMO is that we're people and we do human things right so so instead of creating these systems that separate us right and put us in these silos that against this backdrop it doesn't really change let's keep the world as dynamic as our players are and kind of adjust it based on what they want to do and creating those stories right like in WoW what were the best stories that you tell do you remember any of the stories that we're told you know in dialogue or any of that or do you remember the stories that like you participated in right the weird raid boss wipe that you had right or those are the stories you remember and those are the stories I love hearing those stories I love telling so it's creating tons of opportunity for that to happen so what I'm gonna show you right now is sort of what might happen you know as you're experiencing in this note right so I'm a human right now I spent maybe and couple of my buddies are out here too and we've been killing stuff and crafting stuff and eventually this node levels up the first stage so what you'll find is-

So all the players will see that?

16:39

Yep well everybody who's local to this area so they'll know like something has changed let's go see what happened right so these couple of NPCs have come in this commander right here he has a quest for me these guards are here and there's a merchant here so now I don't have to go back to the starting area to do all that work I can just do it here so because I can do it here more players will spend more time here a couple more hours go by eight hours or so maybe let's say ant it'll level up to the next level and now we've got an Encampment and I'm stuck in that now we've got more guards to have moved in the creatures around this area have changed some roads have been built and now there's more quest givers there quest givers there's more merchants there's more amenities here and this is all human themed because all the humans are doing the work

Looks like he got stuck there

That guy got stuck we're still working out some bugs

No worries it happens

So now let's say because this place is so cool and I really enjoy this area I'm going to be spending a lot of my time here a week goes by maybe two depending on how many players are in this area and I'm a level up to a village and now we've got a human village and we have just procd a a boss event this guy has come with the leveling up he's going to try to bring this node back to level two and the people who were citizens here you need to get together and take him out so that he doesn't kill all the NPCs around here so I'm gonna nuke him real quick because I can't take him out by myself and now that I've killed him

A fierce battle

It was it was very intense so like that's kind of what the nodes bring right they they bring change they bring differentiation all these things look different so like this is a very human town with very human guards and very human people I can change that let's say the Elves were ascendant and it's now an Elf node now everything is Elf themed and all the buildings have changed the guards go on different paths the monsters have changed again and again it keeps things different it keeps things moving it keeps things changing right now in our experience we only have up to level three so I can show you anymore but that's kind of the basic shape of it

19:08

That's awesome and that kinda gives you a lot of opportunity let's say you guys come out with the game already that gives you an opportunity to have a little more time maybe to further level up to develop a few more creatures and put that in there and since you'll be patching it probably you'll be introducing new things each patch or something along those lines

Yeah it's one of those things that's why we have a subscription model we want to really be able to forecast you know the size of our development team so that we can continue to put out more content we want this game to have a long lifespan the only way to support that long lifespan is to continue to provide content for people right different ways for people to interact different organizations you know different levers that players can play with

19:53

That's really awesome are you able to show any kind of battle?

Any kind of what?

Battle

Oh yeah sure we will go

You mentioned it but you won't be going this fast he kind of has it in developer mode again so

Yeah let's turn that down

So here's a little guy I'm playing a mage right now

That's what I always play as

We don't have any sense of auto-attack in this game so all of our attacks are active we want people to play the game we don't want the game to play itself we have kind of a mixture of tab targeting and action based skills so some of the things you'll see are sort of skill shots that lightning bolt was a skill shot the fireball was at a tab target ability we think movement is really important and making things kind of like dynamic and not stationary what we want people to be able to move around when they're casting and that kind of also goes into PvP side of things because again we want people to have fun right and having fun is keeping people engaged keeping the pace fast and letting people build what they want to build so in this game we've got eight different classes well at the end what eight different classes there there split among four physical types and four magical types the physical side we've got tank fighter ranger and rogue the magical side we've got summoner bard mage and cleric so those guys kind of fill the base archetype that you're gonna find in just about any MMO but then we kind of change that up with our subclasses so of those eight archetypes you can subclass those eight archetypes again so I could go tank/mage I could go bard/cleric I could go bard/fighter and kind of change up how my core class functions so once I choose a tank I'm always going to be a tank of some right but if I subclass rogue for instance I might be more of an evasion tank than a mitigation tank if I chose tank again so I'm tank/tank then I'm going to be like a really powerful mitigation based tank my kit changes based on my subclass so let's say I am a so if let's say I am a tank and I subclass mage I'm not going to necessarily get like a fireball right that's kind of the mage's thing but what I will get is access to the elemental sphere and with that elemental sphere I could say take my shield bash right which knocks somebody down when I use it and I'm going to apply my elemental fire to that ability as an augment so now that changes that shield bash ability so that instead of knocking somebody down it sets them on fire so instead of being a control base tank I become more of a DPS tank and I'm gonna change how I play and kind of the feel of what I'm doing yeah

23:15

And so when you kill when you kill one of these guys is there anything that you need to collect from them any kind of anything maybe for a potion or for?

Yeah so we've got a pretty in-depth crafting system you will be crafters are kind of the main drivers of our economy we there's not gonna be a crazy amount in the way of loot drops like I'm not going to necessarily get a sword from that little guy right but I will get something that will help me make a sword and so that gives me that puts the economic power in the crafters hands so I might go and take those things that I might go sell them to a crafter or I might barter with a crafter to make me a cool sword right we want that interaction between players to be really meaningful and we really wanna keep us out of the picture as much as possible

24:11

Alright then as to you've already gone over a lot of stuff you've already gone over a lot of stuff thank you so much one more quick question what kind of a system may be do they not walk but maybe something just so that it runs relatively well do you have any kind of specs on that?

Yeah I think our min spec right now is targeting 960 basically the goal is to have computer when we launch five years back be viable for so so we're not targeting super high-end systems unreal give us a lot of capability to turn down fidelity as we need it so so we've got a lot of options in there right now it plays extremely well even on lower end systems so then we haven't done any optimization passes I have a feeling we're gonna do better than five years but we'll see

Awesome just zoom out real quick alright well thank you so much for your time

Really appreciate you comin by

Thank you so much and guys check out Ashes on Creation looks like enough it's an awesome game I've seen a few videos but coming you guys soon