Discussion & Outline Summary
Community & Reminders
- They are spotlighting 1 YouTube comment per development update.
- On the development side, AoC tracks many granular things in order to track player movement and decisions. This in addition to player feedback will be used for directional development. The players will have many of these things show to the players, and they will have the choice to share this data on the website if desired.
- The Dev Discussion for the Mage is still up.
- There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
- Cosmetics swapping over on June 14th, 2023, at 11AM PST.
Cyclops Combat
- Senior Designer Doug, Senior Technical Designer Jason, and Comat Designer Trad were present in the showcase.
- The Cyclops, Tumok, tried to align himself with the Ancients, however it did not work and as such he is the last remaining cyclops. The rest of his people exiled him.
- Not all animals will aggro you, some will just display warning to not approach any closer.
- The cyclopes will roam around the world and the first indication he is near will likely be an audio queue of his footsteps approaching.
- The cyclops’ is designed for 16-32 party boss and is meant to introduce the players to the raiding system in ashes.
- It will require a good mix of player types to take down the foe.
- During the first phase, the attacks are physical, using the tree. He pulls fungus out of the tree to heal himself.
- His hate list in the first phase is focused more on tanks.
- Tumok will place the tree down to root in order to grow healing caps that he steps on to heal himself.
- The tree totem can be destroyed causing Tumok to go into more of a rage phase, revealing more of a primal cyclops nature, increasing damage output but lowering his self-healing ability.
Cyclops Combat Questions
- Will big creature sleave behind footprint?
- Larger monsters will, general mobs will not.
- What are the respawn rates on world bosses?
- It depends on the world boss, respawns will be variable, not specific times so they can be farmed. The location of the respawn will also vary.
- Will Tumok affect the growth of resources/animals?
- Yes, there are land management systems, and some interactions affect this system, like trees being knocked over.
- Can screen shake be disabled?
- Yes, players have control over on-screen effects.
- Will world bosses becoming different or higher level as the nodes levels?
- World bosses are defined in their challenge rating, scaling mechanic feels cheap and as such the world responds to the changing of nodes, and so the content will change, not scale.
- Will bosses get voice lines?
- Certain bosses will have audio queues, it might be in the form of sounds or languages, but some bosses and creatures will have audio queues.
- Will others be able to come and fight us /Tumok while we are fighting Tumok?
- Content is open world and instance, at a ration of 80-20. World bosses are a limited resources that is open world, as a result of that there is potential to have friction with other players that want that limited resources, it is an element of the game design.
- What are the blue orbs people were carrying around?
- Those are spell focuses, a non-shield off-hand to increase casting abilities.
Art Update
- Many fish models were displayed (fishing professions).
- Pigs/Piglets models were displayed (farming profession).
- Tidebreaker variant model was displayed.
- Hydraswan and a variant of the hydraswan model (March 2018 – Apirl 2018)
- Snake boa model
- The seventh lancer uniform model (August 2022 – September 2022)
- Diadem of the Majestic model (February 2021 – March 2021)
- Greyshore Conveyer model (April 2023 – May 2023)
- Arcane Garbs outfit
- Gloomroot Cap model (October 2020 – November 2020)
- Jade Sigil model (September 2021 – October 2021)
- Plate armor set model.
- The Trawler’s Guise (August 2020 – September 2020)
- The Iceheart Corsage (December 2022 – January 2023)
Studio Update
- They have hired 27 people so far this year.
- They are expanding to another floor as the company is growing.
- Preorder packages will be discontinued within the coming months as A2 participants is already significant.
Question & Answer
- Can we hit our party mate to wake them up from slumber if both are flagged?
- Not your party made, since you cannot flag against your party members, but if you are not in a party then yes you can interact with them to break the sleep, in addition there will also be spells that can be cast to break enchantments, like sleep.
- Will there be quests that will put players against other players?
- Yes, there are quest that interact with PvP. PvP is not a secondary component of the game, but rather an equitable one, Ashes of Creation is a PvX which means that both PvE questlines and content as well as PvP. The world is not just filled with your friends but also adversary, so Intrepid will provide opportunity of player friction which may come via PvP oriented quest lines.
- Will it be possible to kick a player from a party or raid just before killing a boss to deny them their share of the loot?
- Yes, it would be possible to remove someone from your party prior to acquiring loot, however this game relies on social interaction, and reputation is important. Future parties will likely not join a player like that if it becomes known.
- Will there be custom respawn points that can placed by players in the open world?
- There will not be custom respawns points that can be placed in the world.
- Since travel times are importance, what is there to distract you from going strati to your objectives?
- Threat and opportunity both come in many different forms. There is experience based on exploration and treasure hunting.
- Have you considered double jumping for either players or mounts?
- As a mount ability, jumping has been considered.
- After watching the mage yield a great sward I wonder if the ranger archetype will have melee-oriented abilities?
- The ranger exemplified ranges, the majority of there skill tree will focus on range, but it does not preclude them from selecting melee skill rotation as part of their class kit.
- In many PvP MMO, AoE can quickly become the meta, more recent MMO’s solved this problem by not having the same layered AoE spells stack damage at all, what is Intrepid doing to combat AoE spam?
- There are a few different approaches. There is a vein of thought that focuses on diminution returns, maximum number of targets (steven is not a fan of this one), this will likely be tested in A2.
- If the dual wield system is flexible will there be a reliable way to activate the weapon procs of the offhand weapon?
- Duel wielded weapons have a different designated weapon skill tree that is based on the combination of duel welded weapons, based on the types of duel wielded weapons will determine the available procs in the weapon skill tree, you can not rely on procs to always take effect. That is not to say that there aren’t certain skills in your rotation that may have a triggered proc always trigger on your next attack
- How close are we to seeing a showcase on crafting?
- We are pretty close.
Outline Contributor: Skylarck The Botanist