June 25th Livestream Transcription
– Intrepid Studios provides an update on the road to the month long Alpha 1 Test
Quick Updates:
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- Studio move is underway, temporary furniture is in place
- Paypal being added as store payment option
- Back end for major combat overhaul is going live today during the test
Studio Update: Apologies for the stream delay, today is a large development milestone as the major backend revamp for the combat update takes place today. Starting today and over the weekend we will be extensively testing the combat back-end overhaul. Regarding the move to the studio, the main furniture comes in at the end of July, we’ve got some temporary furniture in there for the moment. We’re hoping to move in and monitor the Alpha 1 test in-house.
Design Update: It’s important to note that you will not see a solid UI implemented for Alpha 1, it’s all placeholder. The plan is to provide a highly customizable UI eventually which will let you scale/adjust your damage number texts and more. A big reason for the back-end rework on combat is to ensure things function well during optimization. With our previous combat system, as we were doing large player testing, when players moved all over the world, it was causing performance concerns. Hence we began working on a backend rework for the combat so that the design team could create the tools necessary for the newer skills.
For the past month or so we’ve been having an issue in the Alpha test, as NPCs die, their AI controller stuck around and would stack up over time (An AI controller is the server process that manages the NPC’s behaviour tree). Since it was stacking up over time, it would gradually degrade the server as more mobs were killed. We’ve been incorporating fixes for it over the past month which our patient Alpha 1 testers have been assisting us with. What happens when the server degrades due to such an issue? Well that’s when the player starts experiencing rubberbanding, lag and desyncs. Hence in order to ensure we can have a fluid large-scale experience, we’ve been hammering out this issue over the recent tests.
Currently we’re actively testing the siege as it is a great way to test high density combat. We’ve also incorporated some raid bosses within the siege mode so we can test both PvP and PvE during the test. The siege also allows testing of grouping mechanics such as the raid system and various other systems such as the siege weaponry, castle gates, teleports, control points, buffs and so much more.
QnA Session
Q: Will players receive a memento for their temporary mounts? Like a decor item?
A: Nope. Once it’s gone, its gone.
Q: Will I be selecting augments per skill or one augment for my whole build?
A: Per skill. Augments can be acquired via various means such as archetype, schools, guilds, achievements and more.
Q: If multiple bounty hunters take down a target, who gets the reward?
A: Right now it’s the person who does the last hit. Might change later.
Q: Will players be able to preview items in the auction house before buying them?
A: Currently this is not planned for pre-launch. But maybe post-launch. No scope creep.
Q: Will intrepid own the distribution rights for music made by Bear McCreary and will we be able to stream it with DMCA rights?
A: Yes, we will own distribution rights and you will be able to use the final music.
Q: Will each monster have its own sets of resistances or will there be global resistances like a certain monster catching game?
A: Not every monster will have unique resistances, many will share resistances with specific groups or types. So shared resistance groups for monsters in a shared location.
Q: Is the siege scroll able to be modified once obtained? So if the node advances while questing etc?
A: No. The quest given to obtain a siege scroll is very particular to that type of node and node type. Because if a node levels up, the quest to acquire its siege scroll will be much much harder. So you cannot obtain the scroll for a low level node siege and wait for it to level up.
Q: What will you do if anything to ensure balance between sides of a siege?
A: Interesting question, do we as the developers want to ensure that- Not necessarily. Obviously we want to ensure attacker buffs, defender mechanisms, stages leading up to the siege are all balanced ASSUMING equal footing on both sides. However if one team is more co-ordinated or more geared or higher in number compared to the other team, those things we will not interfere with. But aspects such as castle gate hitpoint values we will balance appropriately. The player aspect of things, we will leave up to the players to coordinate. The servers will keep track of a Guild’s performance and their win/loss ratio. All records for major server events will be kept.
Q: If corruption in an area is not fought back by the players, how far can the corruption go?
A: There are certain events, world progression events that will occur if players ignore it- Such as the spawning of a zombie horde or a dragon awakening. Communities that do not respond to those in an effective way will see services get disabled.
Q: Will non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest spawn or can we choose the respawn?
A: It will be the closest respawn, however certain events will not allow you to spawn nearby. You cannot choose your respawn under normal events.
Q: If you had to choose 1 thing to be as good as possible for Alpha 1, what would it be?
A: Probably server performance. Alpha 1 is incredibly technical, hence one of the primary focuses is vetting the fundamental architecture of how the networking component of the world and the game itself is going to exist so that we can build upon it in the future. Even combat, you should expect its final form at launch.
Q: Any updates on the career job fair intrepid will offer?
A: No details to share currently, the first priority is setting up the office.
Q: How many guild alliances can your guild be a part of?
A: Currently, at most 3 guilds can join an alliance besides yours, for a total of 4 guilds. However this is subject to change.
Q: Will you make flying content for the few people that have flying mounts?
A: Flying monsters will not exist in the game from a content perspective. Some monsters will fly, but they will land on the ground for you to fight.
Q: How many alliances can a guild be in?
A: Only 1.
Q: If I dual wield, will I get exp/skills from both weapons?
A: Dual wielding will have its own sets of skills/trees.
Q: Will there be more niche stats in addition to basic ones such as healing increase or armor penetration?
A: Yes, those will definitely exist. Passives will exist, but there is a wide range of stats that get waterfalled off of your six primary attributes.
Q: Can we use weapons or shields with cosmetic skins on them to place in our freeholds?
A: You will have home decor items that are weapons in nature. Whether or not they can be the same as in-game weapons, we are planning to have unique weapons that can be placed at home.
Q: In regards to targeting, will there be ground targeting templates?
A: Yes you will be able to swap between reticle and targeting templates.
Q: Are there any areas that give corruption to a player?
A: No.
Q: Are there any mechanics from other games you wanted to implement but could not due to technical limitations?
A: Would be great to have spaceships to fly to different planets- Just kidding. Cannot think of anything off the top of my head.
Q: Will there be stat requirements to equip gear? Like needing X amount of strength to equip gear?
A: We decided not to do so. We will have level requirements on gear or affiliation requirements on gear, but from a stat perspective, we decided not to go down that road. We don’t want to shoehorn people into specific types of builds, that would create restrictive metas.
Q: Are there plans to add unique titles that only 1 person can obtain?
A: Yes. Mayors, Guild Leaders, and many other particular titles grant you access to certain things. There are achievements that we want you to strive for.
Q: Will monster coins allow you to take part in events on OTHER servers?
A: No. We might implement cross-server arenas, but no promises. We’d like to have inter and intra PvP ladders between various servers. Kinda like a cross-realm or cross-server arena. However all of this is not in launch plans, maybe post release.
