July 31st Livestream Transcription
– Intrepid studios covers multiple areas of the game’s development and provides a studio update.
Quick Updates:
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- Leader of Men + Phoenix Initiative test is due for the end of August. (Kickstarter Backers)
- 2 years ago we stopped Alpha 1 sales since we hit the 10,000 sale limit. However we may consider opening this later after the initial alpha 1 testing, but it depends on how the stress tests play out.
- All accounts registered before September 2020 will receive a free housing decor statue to signify the struggles we as humanity have gone through with COVID.
- We have a new set of Discord emotes for the server.
Studio Updates: We have begun our next round of hiring and have listed 24 positions at the company of which 7 have been filled. We wanted to wait until the pandemic restrictions were lifted but with the way things are headed, we’ve decided to just go through everything online. Please reach out to developers that might be interested in the project. We’re going to have to push back moving into the new studio to after new years due to the restrictions placed by our government. I know that hype can lead to the dark side, we don’t want it to get to that, but we want to be open and transparent to get as much feedback as possible. It’s great to diversify the feedback.
Design Updates: We hit our big milestone back in May, the time we spent after that is catching up on other things. When it comes to figuring out where we want to go and how to scale the tools for the massive game that we are trying to build. So the design team is working on populating the world quickly and efficiently and engineering is building the tools for it- We’re currently near the end of this process. As design tools were built, over time, as we scale up the development of the game, the tools have to be refined and scaled up as well since the tools speed up development time. A good example is monster spawners, the process of placing the spawners in the world and setting up that data takes a lot of time. So we realized we need something like a world manager that tells the world how to handle each spawner rather than us place each individual spawner. Keep in mind nodes can be of different types, human/elf etc. which affect the world differently.
We’ve been doing a lot special VFX changes recently, if you’ve been following Unreal Engine’s development, we’re now using Niagra which is an amazing way of handling VFX combined with hoodini. So this blink skill might default may only teleport you forward, so by allocating skillpoints you could make the teleport omni-directional, so with a directional keystroke you could teleport while maintaining your direction. The great thing about Unreal Engine is that the graphical fidelity it offers is so beautiful. So if you’ve got capable and talented artists (like Jim) you can pump out amazing art while maintaining game performance.
Next is a skill that allows you to grant a portion of your mana to a friendly character. This skill in particular uses volumetric lighting. Now we are taking into consideration that players will have scalability settings depending on the rig or hardware they are running to reduce the detail on the VFX so that it’s not as intensive on their rigs.
Prismatic beam is another mage skill that roots you down, beams are not easy to do, but this one is flowy-watery and is captured pretty well. I guess it will look better once the player animations are added to it, but yes, it’s a channeled magic skill that falls into a more action based skill where it’s dependent on the accuracy of your mouse, not your character stats. At the first stage, it only hits the first target and stops, but placing skillpoints will let the beam pass through enemies. Ofcourse, all of this is subject to change during testing and it will go through a lot of iterations. One of the coolest things we like seeing, which triggers a dopamine response, is the level up effect. I loved the lineage 2 level up animation so we’re going to try to hit that. What you are seeing above is the FIRST PASS, it will be heavily iterated upon as we go through development.
Next, we wanted to show off the very early stages of gathering and how it works. Gathering is one of the 3 primary artisan tree branches. We’re going to show tool prerequisites, gatherers will have the ability to create the tool which will have a limited amount of usages. As you grow in proficiency you will be able to craft tools with a much higher usage count. As players we are used to 3 different types of gatherables. The first is single gatherable resources which upon gathering disappear and spawn elsewhere. Second is a vein where you can gather multiple of a resource. Third is a more mobile type like a herd of animals that you have to hunt down to collect things. So when gathering, depending on your proficiency there’s a chance to trigger a higher rarity of the resource.
Also I did want to showcase the level 10 dungeon from above, you may have seen it on foot, but I wanted to showcase the entire scale of it. Regarding competing over certain zones within the open world dungeon, let’s say my group runs into your group and we politely ask you how long you plan to stick around in a room, you say ‘Forever!’ and refuse to leave, well then there’s going to be some PvP or probably a war declaration over who holds the room within the open world dungeon. For tagging mobs, if there’s 2 groups fighting over mobs, it comes down to who is doing the most DPS + who tags it first. The experience is divided between the two groups based on the damage done. So if you do 4000 damage to a mob with 10,000 HP, your group will get 40% of the EXP from that monster. Also just to be clear, flying is very very very restricted. Primarily to the mayors, kings and queens. Besides that it’s tied to the incredibly rare drops from world bosses, which drop an egg and you would have to raise it and it will only last a short time. So at any given time on a server, there would only be around 10-15 true flight mounts.
Environment Updates: We had some old waterfalls that are being iterated on, so the water shaders have been updated and will continue to be updated as we get closer to launch. They look incredibly natural and are much better performance wise which is a win win. Next is some seaside environment assets to make the world look like a beautiful place, followed by the Dunir node buildings concept pieces which are a more traditional dwarven race.
Character Updates: First up is an early pass on swimming, this is not final. Screen transition effects for swimming will be added later, but yes water combat will be possible with the usage of your skills. Naval combat is planned to be added. Next is how visual progression takes place. So on the development side, we expand on base silhouettes and the thematic components to show visual progression. You have 8 different armor pieces and you can choose to individually equip different cosmetics to customize your character’s appearance. Followed by the warbeast animations, they are incredibly large in game. The spiders being shown are of various scales, some will be small while others will be taller than your character.
QnA Session
Q: Say I don’t harvest or gather for a couple of levels, would I fall behind in terms of gathering skill?
A: The advancement of your artisan path does not correlate with your adventuring path. So you can just not touch gathering at all until you hit max level. But yes, building up your artisan path will let you unlock various professions. Do keep in mind the game is not designed for level 10 zones, then level 20 zones and level 30 zones. So it’s not going to be all iron in level 10 zones. Things will be realistically regionalized, less game-like and more realistic/organic. This is important so that regions rely on the caravan system to provide access to local resources. Creating supply/demand is important, so some regions will have popular resources while it may lack others.
Q: Will there be any way for players to search for items before travelling to a node? Or do we have to go there first in order to see what is available.
A: On the auction house front, economic nodes have access to auction houses that are local to that node. So if the parent node is economic, the vassal nodes under its ZOI will ‘share’ the auction houses. So from a player stall standpoint, you can purchase a certificate from the economic node and it will provide a license to put down a player owned shop wherever you are in the world. So each node has the ability to build a market, but economic nodes have it built by default for player owned stalls. This is where you list items for sale. Now all of these along with auction house listings will be accessible on the community board that will show you the location and items being sold, so then you can travel there and buy what you want.
