Thanks to PenguinV2 for posting the live stream on youtube for anyone who missed out on the Kick Starter stream.
Below is the Q&A asked in the video in case you don’t want to watch the video or missed something.
During the official Kickstarter Ashes of Creation will have regular live streams during the following days:
- Mondays 3:00 PM PDT
- Wednesdays 3:00 PM PDT
- Fridays 3:00 PM PDT
Q: WHAT WILL THE PHOENIX AURA LOOK LIKE?
The phoenix aura in the game is going to be a particle effect that surrounds your character. Kind of like a fiery/glowing fashion aura that will make your character stand out from other players in the game. It will be toggleable, so you can turn it on or off. The aura represents your spirits connections with one of the primary avatars of the gods in the lore of the game.
Q: WHAT WILL THE CURRENCY BE LIKE IN THE GAME?
We are going to have a single currency system. Trade is going to be a huge aspect of the game. You will buy and sell goods, and receive currency for doing certain actions within the game. The most important aspect of the economy is that we regionalized our marketplaces and warehouses so that trading in the economy is very important for local markets. Currency in the game is going to have greater purchasing power based on the local market you’re a part of because of the supply and demand that will exist in the game. Example, What you’re selling in town A is going to be worth much different in value than in town B and from town B to town C etc. instead of the typical global auction
Q: WHEN WILL THE SANDALS DLC BE AVAILABLE – JOKE
There is a very popular Meme currently in the ashes of creation Discord about Stevens sandals. This is the story behind it. ” I was on a flight and on discord when I fell asleep on the flight. When I woke up and looked down I noticed I had lost my sandals. So I had let the discord know that I had lost my sandals and ever since then it’s been a little bit of a meme about my sandals. They may make an appearance in the game as a very powerful end game loot from some type of world boss. But no there will not be a DLC it will come standard.” – Steven
Q: HOW WILL LOOT WORK IN THE GAME?
Good gear does come from dungeons and bosses, not in the form necessarily that small monsters are going to have them but you’ll find them in treasure chest, world bosses, boss drops, etc.
Also very importantly, we have an extremely intricate and in-depth crafting system. A crafting system that follows sort of a crafting trinity in the sense that there are 3 separate paths that you can develop as a player listed below:
- Gathering
- Processing
- Crafting
Each of these paths requires advancement and you can’t be a master of all of them as an individual player in order to incentive other crafters to work with each other. Crafters to work with gathers and gathers to work with processors and to play again on that local market scene and the regional economy that we’ve kind of developed. Crafting will be able to create the top gear in the game but there will be a comfortable blend of epic drops that are also going to be looped into it.
As well as to add to that question there will obviously be loot tables in the game it’s never going to be completely random what you’re achieving.
Q: ARE ALL ANIMATION PLACEHOLDERS FOR NOW, AND ARE WE PLANNING TO INVEST IN MOCAP?
[Short Answer] No, animation currently are not indicative of the final product we are still on pre-alpha stage so most the animation you are seeing are very unpolished and not representative of what they will be when Alpha/Beta/Launch comes
Currently, we have one animator on our team, David, and he is amazing at his job. Right now we are really focusing on getting animation up and running for a lot of models so that we can get some activity in the game server that we can use as designers. We haven’t done anywhere near a final pass on animation nor have we brought on additional animators but we will be very soon. I believe we have a hiring process going out within the next couple of weeks to bring at least two or three more animators.
Q: HOW WILL PVP BE LIKE?
It’s important to note that there needs to be a comfortable balance between PvP and PvE. Without an environment, that means something, without an environment that takes commitment, growth, and effort on part of the player base you’re not really going to have much satisfaction on PvP. We took an approach on how we can make PvP meaningful and catalyze change that players will see based on events that may happen either organically or even structured events. PvP in Ashes of Creation revolves around a few systems.
– FLAGGING SYSTEM
We have taken a different approach to the flagging system in regards to what type of penalties people take for murdering others. We don’t want this to be a gank/murder box. We want this to be a PvP that incentives players to fight back and defend themselves if they are out in the open world.
– CASTLE SYSTEM
Castles are kind of like the pinnacle of guild achievements in the game. They exert control over the regions that they exist in and over the nodes that the castle has purview over.
– NODE SYSTEM: SIEGE MECHANICS
There’s also a siege mechanic related to our node system that kind of allows for the player to institute change among nodes because the way that nodes develop they lock out other nodes as they’re progressing in stages. We don’t want the lockout to be permanent we want it to be up to the players to determine if civilization should take a new direction and sieging nodes is a way that that can be done.
– CARAVAN SYSTEM
Again talking about regionalized marketplaces and economy, caravans are how we transit goods from those regional places to other places in order to process the goods or sell them in those local markets.
Caravans carry with them a static proximity ground around the caravan which prompts the player within range to either participate as a defender of that caravan or as a bandit of that caravan or just not participate at all depending on the choices of the player.
– GUILD WARS SYSTEM
Wars between guilds that may have some player-driven political issues. We really want the meaning from PvP to be something that is developed by the players.
Q: WILL YOU BE ABLE TO JUST PLAY THE GAME AS A CRAFTER NO PVP OR PVM?
[Short Answer] You can absolutely minimize your involvement in both PvP/ PvM and still advance significantly in the crafting/artisan class. But to fully reach your potential in that regard you’re going to actually have to get involved in some of the most combat-oriented aspects of the game.
A lot of the progression in the crafting class which is called your artisan class isn’t necessarily locked behind your adventuring class level. However, there are certain achievements and or tasks that are given to you in the crafting system that may require you to be a certain level in order to complete them.
As well as not all Nodes spawn points are going to be super safe areas. For example, let’s say you are mining iron and it’s near a spawn of monsters it will be a lot more difficult to mine that resource if those monsters are higher level than you.
But we are also trying to make it so that you can do this class, do the artisan tree and have a functioning economy for yourself without having to necessarily dig into areas that you don’t enjoy.
Q: WILL SEASONS AFFECT GAMEPLAY AND OR EVENTS?
Seasons will absolutely play a role in both gameplay and certain events. Seasons will impact your environment. They may close off certain dungeons or open up certain paths that were previously closed to the people. They’re going to affect crop rotations. They’re going to affect what NPC’s are available, what monsters spawn, and their visuals. We want immersion in our game to be a fully faceted mechanic where you can enter in and you’ll feel many aspects of the world including seasons and how it affects your time in the game.
Q: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TO MAKE SUMMONERS GREAT AGAIN?
[Short Answer] We’re trying to orient things to the summoners like group skills to make them more dynamic and have a different summons to make it enjoyable for the player. Summoners, in particular, will have the ability to gain custom appearance for their summoned paths. Each summoner character can possibly have a different representation of those cosmetic for their summons.
We have 8 arc types in ashes of creation. Basically, you’re going to enter the game choosing a primary adventuring class. You’ll choose from one of those 8 arc types. 4 Marshalls and 4 Arcane. Summoners along with all of our classes are going to be very AWESOME!
Q: HOW ARE YOU PLANNING ON DOING SERVERS AND WILL WE BE SEEING MERGING IF A SERVERS PLAYER BASE DIES?
[Short Answer] Multiple Servers! There will not be a world server. We are thinking of a very healthy number for the concurrent server usage.
First of our goal is to accurately and proportionately populate our servers so that there’s a very healthy number of players. In order to achieve that goal having that relationship with the community and the kick starter will help us have a strong player base mitigating the risk to consider server merges. But if we were to come up across that issue, it will be a process that’s fair to each of the server population to be considered for that merge.
