Discussion & Outline Summary
Community & Reminders
- The YouTube comment for this month lead Steven to explain that the level system is meant to be an adventure. It’s meant to be a moment-to-moment type of gameplay, and it should be fun, and you enjoy doing that is rewarded that teaches you about the world. An important part of any MMORPG is the social interactions, and because many of these systems have been in place for a long time, most social interactions focus on the late game. In ashes you are always contributing to the decisions trees even if you are not at level cap.
- Extra Life is taking place November 3rd – 5th. (Pre-game and 24hr stream)
- The Dev Discussions for Basic Attacks and Respawn times is still up.
- There are still regular office hours that you can provide input on discord with the team.
- Cosmetics swapping over on January 17th, 2024, at 11AM PST.
Caravan Preview
- Node Caravansaries and Hunting Lodges are default buildings at level 3 nodes.
- Inside the Hunting Lodge is a commodity vendor.
- Monster Certificates are now known as “Glint”. It is a material substance acquired through various means but mostly from hunting in the open world. It is the physical form of the essence of the beast. It is bound to your character. Glint is used to pay for certain services, such as taxation or citizenship dues, and commodities.
- Player commodities is the main way players can make gold. You can either sell your glint to the commodities vendor, or to buy some player commodities and transit them to other nodes for higher value.
- The commodities are unique to the biome/node. Players can sell them in exchange for gold or elsewhere for more gold (for a higher price).
- The example for the livestream was ~7x the price, but it was the closest node to them. The further the node from the original node, the more the price will go up.
- A caravan master in the caravansary can help you acquire a caravan.
- Once you purchase a caravan, you can upgrade lots of things, such as chassis, armor, beast of burden.
- A Caravan event starts even before a caravan is launched.
- There is an in-game radius from the node which you can see where you can place your caravan.
- You summon your caravan from inventory, it takes time for the caravan to get to you. By default, it takes ~2 minutes, this can be modified according to modifications from the Caravansaries, and policies.
- The time is proportional to the distance from the node.
- You can summon empty caravans in the wild, but the summon time will also be proportional to your distance from a node.
- Players can see the buffs by looking at the caravans of other players.
- You get road buffs to go faster on a road, but there are a variety of buffs for off road as well.
- When caravans intersect a river, if there is no bridge (constructed by players and majors) the caravan will transition into a raft. There is a construction time for this transition.
- There are environmental hazards, like downed trees on roads.
- Once arrived, you can go to the hunter’s lodge at a new node you can sell your commodities.
Caravan Q&A
- Are we to transfer physical goods, like fish from the coast to the mountain to sell to other players?
- Yes. Players can move commodities, materials (like fish), and mayors / system generators caravans for node resources for public work projects. This dev update was just focusing on commodities.
- Can you lose the caravans upgrade if the caravans is destroyed?
- Yes, you lose everything. However, if it takes damage, the damage can go to specific components.
- Are gold prices seen on stream too low?
- Balance has not been finalized.
- How big is the radius of the announcement of the event of the caravan?
- The even notification proximity radius can be augmented either through players advancement for the highwayman system, or from the components of the caravan.
- What is the most 1 caravan can transport?
- There will not be an answer to this question until we get enough feedback.
- Are there any plans to prevent streamers from getting harassed when starting a caravan?
- There will be certain system that won’t lend well to streaming, since some systems require some secrecy. Things like that cannot be solved by the developer, as it is a part of the game, but you can have stream delays to help things like that.
- Does speed vary based on the weight of the items in the caravan?
- At this time, speed lives with the caravan not its contents.
- Could you upgrade roads to help with the sped of the caravan?
- Absolutely, the road buff is dependent on the world state, this includes relics which nodes may have access to, some of it has to do with policies (like guard radius).
- In PvP what is looting the caravan like?
- When a caravan is destroyed, it creates a wreckage, that wreckage will have a number of supplies that it was caravan, the products become stole resources/stolen (corrupted)glint. They maintain the type, but you can call an empty caravan to take them. But you can also open the crates which will destroy some of them, but then you would be able to carry them on your person.
- Can you purchase insurance for your caravans?
- No there is no insurance system for the caravan system. But it may be player organized if a guild wants to take that up.
Studio Update
- There have been a lot of layoffs in the game industry. Intrepid is continuing to grow, this month they have hired 11 people. There are still more job postings online to fill.
Art Update
- Veshan Komodo (November 2022 – December 2022)
- The Charmed Threads model (July 2023 – August 2023)
- Veteran Aurite Drake model (May 2022 – June 2022)
Q&A
- Who is able to pilot the different types of caravans? (will trolls take them over?)
- The owner of the caravan can make a permanent list of friends that they can select to have the rights to drive the caravan, in addition anyone can drive the caravan unless the owner activates the rider’s permission ability, which restrictions access to the driver sit to the selected list of players and the player. The player that drives the caravan receives a strong buff that limits CC and damage. Should that driver be killed, after a period of time, that owners’ lockout will be released and anyone can grab the caravan and drive off, eventually (15-20 minutes) the caravan could despawn and left as a wreckage to be looted. The Caravan does have collision and players could jump on top and ride on it.
- Will players have the ability to set up an ambush to trap the caravan temporarily.
- As it stands currently, it would be difficult for players to block the caravan, there are some effects that can be applied, like stun and slow effects, to limit its movement. The collision priority means that mounts and players cannot physically stop caravans. This is also true for ships.
- How will the game handle multiple people be sending multiple caravans at the same time?
- As a player you can participate in events with as many caravans’ events as you want in the same event. This would join them in a caravan defense group.
- Will players receive the guild name of the caravan owner?
- Yes, that will be part of the event notification.
- Can the caravan itself be affected by abilities from tanks?
- There are certain abilities which could be utilized to block some incoming attacks from the caravan.
- Do nodes provide their citizens for representations?
- NPC do have representative apparel, and there is a node sigil which you could put onto an armor, but nothing built in atomically.
- Is the economic node bid a node sync or does it go into the treasury?
- It’s a sync. You are paying for the power.
- Can the special items only available to high ranks of position.
- They are bound and timed.
- Can you explain what you mean by 50% of player power means?
- That is a general allocation of what players can pursue when playing. There are changes through the leveling curve, by the end of the game, itemization becomes most important.
- How do you expect many people at once in certain zone (layering)?
- Player density is an important aspect to the game. This is important to facility player density goals, but also player travel. There are a number of different strategies at a network level, such as net relevancy distance. The goal is to satisfy hundreds of players in a given area, especially in sieges.
Outline Contributor: Skylarck The Botanist, Simurgh