[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everyone and welcome to another day and Vera and today we have an exciting showcase one that has been long in the making probably one of our largest systems that we have actually shown to date I know that there are a lot in the audience who are excited about what we're going to be talking about and what we're going to be showing today many of you have been waiting for this particular showcase and I am joined by some pretty awesome developers who have made what you're going to see today reality three of our glorious engineers Kyle Kenan Zach how are you guys doing doing pretty good thanks for having us yeah thank you very much for having me absolutely excited to chat with you guys about what it what it took to bring this particular feature to life I know that each of you in your respective rights have had different purviews over uh this kind of massively multiplayer engagement the unique system work that's involved for the war and the events itself uh along with obviously combat player movement um for you guys so a lot of insights there which I'm going to be exciting excited to chat with you guys about as we kind of go through this um also we have two of our glorious designers regulars on the show uh Chris Trad how are you guys doing oh wonderful thanks for having me it's great to be here yep I'm hyped for some PVP oo some PVP and and this amazing War system Chris that I know that you have been slaving away over the course of the last few months in in in helping to author and set up and doing a lot of testing with our PI group and and iterating on the system as well um a lot of hard work has gone to this going going to be excited to to kind of showcase that off and then of course no true project can be successful without the absolute amazing responsibility of production we have one of our glorious producers here Nathan Nathan how are you doing my friend oh I'm I'm so excited I'm EXC this was a big step for us to put the massive back in MMO and uh I'm excited to show that off to everyone today excited to show it off too now many of you may be asking yourself where am I what are we looking at we are currently in the node of Mirth where I have been bestowed with the great honor of mayorship leading these these beautiful wonderful people to to success all across the riverlands and Vera Beyond and we have recently gotten into maybe some some interchanges that haven't been so polite with one of our neighboring nodes and this can happen in the world of Vera there are a lot of systems set up to to provide players an outlet to kind of govern themselves govern their relationships with each other um come hither Steven Winstead shall show you the way to wi unbelievable they they are already trash talking look at this this disrepute that comes from Margaret as the mayor of Winstead we must respond in kind Chris what are some of the options we have available to us when our honor is being questioned as a note yeah so um as you kind of alluded to we're going to declare war on them because they're big meanies um so we have wa can we rephrase that it's not that they're big it's that I said meanies they're big meanies it's not that they're big meanies it's that we must exert our dominance and we can only truly achieve respect through Power and if we don't demonstrate that power to these peons that are at Winstead then how will they know to fear us uh that's a much more eloquent eloquent way to put it Stephen um so we have to jump through a few Hoops before we can declare war War uh you know we don't want Mayors running around in ashes a creation just like Perma flagging the whole world into a state of PVP right so some people just said wait a minute yes I do well it's going to cost you some resources to do that um so Stephen as the mayor you have access to a special panel in your uh node UI all right I pulled up my node my node interface now I must take this moment as is normally the case to remind everyone in our audience that everything you see here today is a work in progress that means that we are currently working towards our Alpha 2 which we have announced for third quarter this year um so UI visual effects performance just the general content within the game is in an alpha State please remember that as you see this things will continue to get better and continue to be developed and the reason that we do these live streams and these development updates is to keep our audience AB breast of that progress but also to elicit necessary feedback as we iterate on these particular systems because there are a lot of them um so sorry Chris I am in this node window and I see that I have available to me some number of Merl commissions that I can begin with correct now this tab is only available to the mayor hence why it's called the mayor tab um and if you hit that button in the top right Corner the manage commissions button oh okay very nice you'll see we have a list of commissions and a bunch of available slots for you to initiate now these are much like regular commissions that uh I think we've shown off in the past the difference here is the mayor is picking which ones are going to be available to players and okay when enough players complete them the node gets a reward right very good so this is this is a bit different than your standard commissions your non oral commissions because those are generated by the system based on predicates of the surrounding area uh from a narrative perspective and this mayoral commissions are really more predicated on what the mayor needs to have done to collect resources or to enable certain actions such as War correct now additionally like more mayoral commissions will become available as the node progresses and the commissions that are available will change based on how the node is built right so if you a blacksmith you might get some special smithing related commissions uh that you could elect to initiate for your players um but if you don't upgrade that blacksmith you're not going to be able to do that got it very cool okay so I see here there's one called War preparations and that's the one you're going to want to use if we want to go to war so what you're going to do is you're going to go ahead and initiate that commission if you see in the top right of that panel there's the um some glint available that's the reward players will get for doing this activity oh okay should I should I confirm this selection go confirm the selection okay okay so player so when players complete this commission they do their part and this is essentially them buying on to this Choice correct got it so so it's not just unilaterally and obviously guys as you're watching this some of these some of these system designs are in an effort to provide these gameplay Loops um with the resources that we have available to us at this stage in the development for Alpha 2 purposes longterm and we'll talk about this a little bit later how some of those designs will change and incorporate other systems which we are still pending development on um but here the the players that are citizens of this node must opt in with the mayor's decision by completing this mission in order to grant that power and and for their participation they're getting rewards as well absolutely correct very cool and so what are these Awards they getting so they're going to get some glint which uh We've also shown off in the past that they can turn in for money mhm okay so they're getting paid very cool should we select any other ones here too um yeah I mean they all offer a varying breadth of things right uh the primary thing we're rewarding through mayoral commissions is what we call node Buffs um and these are benefits that are applied to your zone of influence uh so for example you might want to do a mayoral commission that increases uh Gathering speed for 24 hours in the node and if enough players do that you guys get that benefit okay let's do the building Foundation you know cuz I'm not all about as a mayor just War right we must make safe the grounds around us as well let's get rid of some of those goblins um and perhaps we should acquire some forages Okay cool so we have a number of different commissions now that are available to the players correct now if you want to close out of that window and walk over this is our fancy oral commission board over here oh very cool okay and if you interact with it it'll show the commissions that are currently that you've initiated nice now we have obviously a fire that's closest to the door being of course our war preparations because honestly the Shifty characters over at Winstead really can't be trusted especially in the proximity they are to our node um so how am I going now how am I going to go ahead and complete this uh so first accept the commission by clicking on it got it um if you notice it's popped up in your objective tracker all right and I believe it says turn in 20 T1 materials do you have enough T1 materials stevenh you know I think um just by pure coincidence I happen to have exactly 20 um that are available yes so this little treasure box next to the commission board is where you can turn in all right ah okay very cool um yes I will turn in some of my stone and I got my reward objective is now complete awesome now currently for the sake of this showcase that maral commission is set to only require one player to complete it so that we can you know speed things along for us and we don't have to wait you know a couple of days for hundreds of players to do this um but that is the intent right is that these commissions do require a heavy optin from the player base in the order of magnitude being hundreds of these commissions need ex completed and that'll depend on the scope of the commission right so some commissions with very minor effects might not require a large amount of players to complete them but something like going to war will require a larger amount of players and a larger amount of dedication per player got it and we have we have our company of ready able and willing citizens here to to provide the support we need in order to succeed in our war preparation so hurah to you well done well done everyone um okay so now that we've effectively completed the commission yep so if you want to press n again to open up that node UI got it you'll notice that there is a completed tab next to your node UI which shows that enough play have done the activity for you and now this commission's on cool down so when your hand rolls once a day if that commission cool down is longer you will lose that slot and you won't be able to use that commission until that cool down has ended oh very nice okay so obviously the mayor needs to be somewhat prudent in the choices that they're making even if they do get the opt-in from their citizens there is so much power they have available to them to affect that change it is governed to a degree by some time exactly cool but now that we've completed it you've received as a result of this commission a War token specifically for the territory War type of War so if you want to go ahead to the node relationships tab ah okay you'll notice there's a list of notes Here specifically Winstead I do you see that uh and if you want to go ahead and click on that declare war button we won't do it we won't do it right now but just to show you the uh steps here that you would take you that declare war button there and it shows there is a couple different types of war that you have access to oh okay very cool all right so so territory control obviously makes sense test node war is a is is obviously one of our QA testing war types um there will be a number of different war types that are available um that we'll talk about in a little bit as as well awesome um well so Steph now that we have what we need to declare this war do we want to go over to Mir or over to Winstead and uh kind of rub it in their face yeah I think so I think that would that would probably make sense um Let me give a a quick inspiring uh speech if I can of course to our to our glorious citizens what's the name of our this is mirth mleth mirians Noble great and honorable mirians our city has been denounced by arrival node the Winstead node they know nothing of our ways of our people but they know something something not good and fear anguish there thank you fear anguish well done you're one of my lieutenants well done uh fear anguish they will know that soon enough for they chose to stand against the will of Mirth let us go forward and teach them the ways of our people all right we've done this mirth best prepare your brooms you'll need them to sweep up something I didn't get that broadcast Mar's just loving this the trash talk oh sweep up our ashes our ashes well well done well done so Chris where are we where are we planning to go well we were going to go to Winstead but I I think we have company we have company wait we have unwanted company they've been spying on us who are these people well they're not they're not affiliated with us you would they would dare to come to our town like this after we've just laid The Gauntlet of War down what well you haven't you haven't declared the war yet oh I haven't declared should I declare the War I mean I feel like this is an optimal time to declare the war cuz we might get some uh some easy kills you know what I think you might be now now okay now of course they can't hear or know what we're going to do here but they have no idea what's coming no they have no clue what is about to happen but the territory control node War talk to me first Chris a little bit about the territory control node yeah so um we'll get into some of the more depth of War while we're walking but the territory can control War as it kind of sounds is about controlling territory right so what this is going to do is it's going to flag us against each other um the citizens of our node and the citizens the node you declare on and then we'll do battle over certain pois in both of our zones of influence and gain control over them based on winning those events and those pois and once we've accumulated enough victory points we'll win the war which gives our Zone a big buff as well I approve of the node war and let us destroy them in 3 2 1 oh get him oh no oh dear did we get them I think we cleaned them out oh put a wall up I don't know where the dragon went but that sounds like a Futures problem sure that won't come by to bite us I think we did destroy them you know I think I'm missing my blink where is my blink you got to close your eyes and then you open them again no not that blink and my bubble oh there they were and I should probably get this Arcana eye there we go okay sorry about that guys um okay so they tried to they tried to stop us but they we can't be stopped um where should we go now well so before we before we run off uh open up your node relationships tab again okay got it and you'll notice you'll see there's an active war and we've earned some points in this War uh if you go to the top of that yeah right there okay and we have five points cuz we killed five people oh nice okay so in during the war obviously we have available to us this this that tracks kind of performance and each individual player can track their performance within the war as well correct okay and then it says earn a th000 victory points uh in order to win the war correct now it's the the end condition of this War uh now victory points are earned via kills and earned by via completing objectives okay all right cool awesome now um the event that it talks about talk to me a little bit about that event so open up your map and scroll yourself over to you'll see that scroll to the left there and you'll see there's a big circle around High women Hills OH harness the god Spike currently it say active as 31 players does that mean they have 31 players already there that means they already have 31 players there we better get a move on we need to go let's let's start moving let me um let me see if I have a little horse I could summon did I where' my horse go and being left behind Steven I know oh here we go I got it okay um so talk to me about the different types of War events and war types yeah so war types are going to be pretty predicated on what they're actually delivering to the winners and losers right so this one's a territory control the Crux of what this does is you claim territory which siphons the node XP from the nodes that you from the pois that you're winning these objectives at um it's also providing uh a luck buff there to prevent or to you know incentivize the players who win to to go farm there right and generate more node XP for your node um we have other different types that we plan to have Post State 2 um like disabling services in the opposing node uh siphoning gold um taking over mayorship temporarily very cool so there's a lot of different options that we intend to provide um obviously for the war system and this is one of the primary methods of player friction right so um we want to keep that kind of compelling interesting from a design perspective uh which all of these different war types are intending to provide um and throughout Alpha 2 we'll be introducing additional War uh node War event types as well correct very cool talk to me Kyle a little bit about authoring this uh node War system how did you go about you know keeping it modular and you know capable of supporting all these different types of Wars well given the game design document that juusto provided uh the goal was of course to provide something as flexible as possible to be able to give all of that designed Freedom so we were able to leverage existing systems such as the game event system and the local system to be able to give the a massive amount of varing content from war to war awesome and and you know obviously talk to me a little bit about kind of the difficulties of of authoring a system like that yeah the difficulty is definitely having to work between different teams uh because the game event system and the local system are authored by The Narrative engineering team so we have to make sure that we can work discipline to discipline to uh get the needs that are required to bring something like this to life nice awesome and Zach obviously node Wars node events those are some of the more High player density types of gameplay Loops talk to me a little bit about some of the difficulties you had on the performance side uh working with tech art engineering and and artists to kind of get performance where we needed it to be for this higher player density oh yeah for sure for performance it's really been a refinement of our pipelines and processes and workflows with a pretty tight iteration loop on you know testing profiling like auditing those profiles like seeing what we're at and then like correcting things that need to be corrected and especially with an MMO we really have to support like a large array of player experiences so the game has to run great whether you know you're a solo player or you're playing in a group and then it also has to run great for you know big events like these where there's going to be upwards to 100 players sometimes right so it's really been uh all hands on deck from all the disciplines to refine our current existing standards and make sure that we can hit performance while continuing to uh look good awesome well I have arrived at what I believe is our headquarters and there appears to be a significant portion of our Garrison from the node that has arrived here our guards where is the rest of our group oh you guys should uh meet let's meet up here if we can at the um at the headquarters and let's and let's do some planning I'm sure there's some significant strategies that we can employ right Chris oh yes there is um so the lowdown uh first things first is if you look at your objective tracker there's some stuff going on um we need to gather imbued blood and imbued materials now imbued blood is going to drop off Bandits that have this glowy particle effect to them and imbued materials are going to drop off uh Ruby caches that are all around the poi okay well let me um and we we have to do that before the enemy team I see uh if they complete it before us we still can finish ours but we'll be behind and they'll be on the victory condition okay so we're looking for these imbued Bloods and the um the imbued material um and the Bloods come from the bandits in the area correct okay and the material are the are rubies that are kind of spawned throughout the out this particular Zone and let me open up my map real quick yep so marked on your map is all of the Ruby locations but the Bandit locations are not marked oh okay okay so the bandits are are kind of sprinkled throughout the area and these these locations here that I'm hovering over these imbued material caches those are spawns around the area and presumably that's where the enemy is going to be located as well because we're all trying to acquire these in order to progress to the next stage correct got it okay cool okay so we should probably split up into three teams um if you are in party group four or group five you're going to be responsible for trying to acquire the Ruby so you're going to be going to those imbued Ruby Cash locations your primary objective is to avoid interacting with the Enemy you do not want to engage the enemy if you see them run you're just acquiring these resources and trying to bring them back to where Chris you got to bring them back here and talk to good old scholar Thompson okay all right cool so you guys in group four and five you're going to acquire those um and probably if you're a ranger and can be camouflage it would be beneficial for you to go out and try to acquire those if you're in groups one two or three you're going to be running cover while killing the um the uh Bandits and then when they get the bandits blood those they're bringing those back as well sorry what was that I was multitasking Steven no worries no worries when they when they grab the bandits blood they're bringing those back as well they are bringing those back as well now worth noting they do drop on death so if you end up with too much of them be very careful okay um guys I think before we head out I'd like hold on let me uh me get in a good position for you I'd like you to all gather around in front of the Dragon I'm going to give you an inspiring buff perfect perfect perfect now I'm I know that this Venture would strike fear in the heart of normal men and women but not in the hearts of mirians go forward bring back the trophy that is oops hold on hold on bring back the trophy that is the blood go forward let us move let's go Lads get them okay so where are these Bandits at that groups 1 two and three can go oh I see over here yeah they're going to be all over the POI they've got this lovely little glow to them to signify their importance okay cool then if you come over here we got a nice little cash of rues as well where's the rubies at just uh oh oh I see I see West I'm just kind of I'm I'm kind of watching out for the enemy while you guys are harvesting those rubies and killing the bandits ooh very nice so far I don't see any I see this light emanating from the center of this area over here yep that the god Spike that's the god Spike now that is what we are gathering these materials for and then we're going to channel these materials into to harnessing that like raw power that's emanating from the center of high women Hills so that we can steal the node experience and get ourselves a nice little luck buff in the POI um after we win because we never lose we have some enemies over here that I can see we should probably get groups 1 2 and three over here to interrupt them it looks like they is that us with the progress of two that is us with the progress of two okay all right we've taken the lead let's see I'm running back a small stack of materials here let me see where the raids at okay looks like we are bringing in a bunch of materials talk to me um talk to me Nathan about what this process has been like from a production standpoint yeah it's been a super interesting one for us like games are really always these really janky combinations of software and Art and Design and all of these things are kind of coming together in in a way that makes them inherently difficult to put out to the public I've uh had my fair share of Rocky in the past and so what we've been really focusing on this time around is making sure that we're kind of honing that process early uh to try to make alpha 2 um you know day one as smooth as possible obviously it's going to have some hitches but uh this has been a really good opportunity for us to get in the habit of pushing a build out getting feedback from people around the world uh figuring out like what's wrong with their specific you know setup at home so that then we can identify those issues triage those issues fix the ones that we can in order for us to push a build out for the next round of play testing which we've been doing every 1 to two weeks for the last uh couple of months I think and so that's um that's been like from a production standpoint a really awesome kind of test run for us to get in the habit of this you know like live service game that we're going to be supporting for a really long time uh so that's been a lot of fun you know a lot of lot of work but you know that's good oh yeah yeah you guys have done a great job on production side of this this feature is obviously a very very detailed and encompassing feature touches a lot of different pieces um I I see we have some great uses of the tank wall some of you from APO may be remembering that particular wall oh this we're having a significant little battle over here yeah that's been one of the things we've been trying to work on right is um you know making sure that those objectives really help funnel the G people towards those points of of conflict I think some of our what was interesting here is some of our earlier iterations had us you know it was kind of like this phase one where people just kind of PVE the whole time and well we we want to find that balance between PVE PVP where we become this really pvx game and so that's been an area of focus for us uh like making sure that these objectives are things people want to interact with and then fight over that was a good little fight oh I'm getting hit hard I think I lost one of my abilities let me grab it back there we go oh I see I see dread and he's down only took 10 of you unbelievable it's the skill difference Focus fire and doing oo perfect let's move forward let's keep pushing go on NYS oh I got rooted there we go and slow oh there's Margaret oh get her she's on the dragon though SL no no okay we're pushing them back I've got Brian on my target think he's tank he wants you to Target him oh God oh God need help backed out attack the king wildly in danger all right let's get the group around me if you can I'm going to use one of the mayor abilities to give us some offensive power and Chris as I do this talk to me a little bit about this ability yeah so so um go forward different node types have different mayor abilities um that can be used in different scenarios right so the what you just used is the war ability afforded to a scientific node push um and those abilities give a very large uh mitigation and damage buff to the players within your range when you use them how long does that ability last um I believe the buff is 5 minutes our wonderful Dr Bucky made those for us oh he got away they're fling on the bridge on the bridge bridge coming back around oh they are how's the progress going 7 26 for them 15 for us oh my gosh no no no we we have two objectives Steven the top one is uh we're at 15 out of 100 the bottom one we're at 76 out of 100 oh okay perfect that was concerning but you'll notice there is an enemy progress bar right below that too to show how far long they are good call good looks like they're slacking though okay I've got a couple flankers over here TP noodle ooh that's a good little blink it's also been really fun to see the metas kind of evolve over these play tests uh you we had a uh point where there was the tank wall ability was a little too strong and um you know uh got a chance to fix that before the recording and that's just kind of been the really fun process over over the last uh couple of months here uh cleric thankfully still op for me so um you know you love to see it yeah that cleric is uh very strong cleric will always have a free pass of being op in it's one role that it excels at if nothing else got to be the best healer I got Fant MX down let's get that was nice him to let you do I know right he's almost dead like Trad Keenan I'm I'm curious if there have been any like big you were talking earlier about some of the surprises that have come out of the play testing I was wondering if you guys had any um examples of things that you weren't expecting but you know saw when we started really putting this uh Compass system to test um I mean nothing that we weren't really expecting completely but it has definitely been a huge help just like uncovering you know smaller imbalances here and there like the wall thing that you mentioned for example was was a thing we actually uh knew knew was an issue and had fixed on a on like a another build but like it was still funny seeing that like get completely um taken advantage of it yeah and it like showed some interesting like strategies like how people would use them to Zone each other in these little hallways and almost create your your own effective like little corridors on the open Battlefield so we definitely want to see some of that sort of thing it's just you know a matter of balancing that I think I died Behind Enemy Lines oh no May's down don't worry don't worry guys I turned into blood oh putting in so much work Nathan yeah we still need more of the imbued Bloods that's the uh that's the bandits right that's the bandits yep all right I'm going to try to find some Bandits to kill while you guys continue to hold them off we need more people on Bandits yep and bandits for this event are a little bit more scarce but respawn a lot faster than the rubies where the rubies are a bit more more plentiful but have a much slower reset rate got it there's my healers coming in at the last hour not finding any Bandits they killed them all oh oh no yeah there's a definite balance between targeting the PVE objectives and then PVP because um the the drops that you need to turn in um also can drop from players so sometimes you'll want to gank people that you see it cuz they might have some of the stuff that you need to turn in for credit toward the war see the god Spike but it's also really easy to get trapped in long drawn out PVP engagements and let the enemy team just grind out resources and that's part of the strategy is like you know sometimes you'll you'll want to tank up and have a bunch of people distract uh the group from doing the the objectives while you're sending out those little side squads we've done that a few times in our own testing for sure found some Bandits oh no oh that's us never mind all right getting some Bandit bloods oh there's an enemy here an enemy and a pvp's down that's crazy oh no I might need some help so it's looking like at least stad is done with the rubies so we need to focus on Bandits now so there's going to be a lot of competition on those yeah we're done with rubies too so you're in danger what is this pvpve oh I'm getting shot from above they went all right we got some Bandits over here I'm going go turn them in just do do you want to talk about some of the other uh use cases that like we're hoping people will incentivize people to want to uh engage in war yeah I mean we have uh like the goal here is kind of twofold for war right there is the player reward side of it and then there's the like node reward side of it uh obviously we want players to be invested in nodes and invested in what they have and what they can do so you know those things are relics they Services their resources and you know these wars can deny and even steal those things from other nodes but also they're personally rewarding right like we want to make sure players are getting something immediate for themselves because obviously we know most players aren't going to run a node and not every player is going to be invested as nodes as some other players yeah um so you know those personal rewards as we've talked about a little bit um in the case of this event uh will result in a buff farming in this POI so if there's some sweet loot that you're looking for from this POI uh winning here is really valuable cuz you're higher odds of getting it in the future or you know while you're farming here post this event yeah on top of your oh go ahead oh on top of your traditional just like some XP and some glint you know and potentially those kinds of things and node currency well that's been kind of a like a a big part of the I think we talked about this actually last time we were talking about uh nodes during the Caravan live stream but that's been a big part of the design ethos of of uh the nodes team is like making sure that there are a lot of reasons to uh participate in nodes so that you don't just like node participation isn't just um relegated to that like top 1% most active most attentive players like you can still you still have reasons to contribute and participate for a lot of on a lot of axes well and it's also about making sure that like you're not just doing it out of the good of your heart right you're doing it because you're getting something for your player progression immediately and you can let like the big brain kind of Zerg leaders manage the more highend right holy smokes dude is insane ran into a m we had some flankers over here did not work out for them well it feels like they're like outnumbering us is there are there any uh planned uh protections for just uh Zer B Zer fights for uh large scale PVP you know some of that comes down to how we design the events right but some of it also comes down to combat design uh this this event in particular we're trying to Fan players out by having lots of small things they have to do um and then at the end when we need to fight over this uh channeling this God spike is when zergs are supposed to come together right so creating a place for zergs uh to have something that they want to do cuz there are people that do like Zerg combat people that prefer the smaller skirmishes I think really the way you incentivize it too is is like there's no stopping players from Zerg V zerging if they want but if the objectives reward maximally like splitting your forces um and and ways we do that is we'll we'll create simultaneous objectives in VAR highly different areas of the map so if you're if you're a one big Zerg ball you might be willing or winning your your encounters but you're not winning at um you know dividing conquering so to speak so uh eventually like players will learn like yeah if if we play this way we're not going to be as effective we need more imbued blood yeah we're falling really far behind oh no those are the uh those are the off of the bandits those are off the bandits right maybe we should break up and um have the have everybody kind of try to get the bandits yeah I know a pretty good spot for the bandits but it's kind of in dangerous territory I think at this point we have to take the risk their the enemy progress is pretty high I do believe danger is all of our middle names so that should work out true all right so it's just south and west of the of the enemy's Camp okay let's try to move South and West South and West not going to make it there social media man why social media man truly the bane of everyone's existence dude that guy just got a crazy KD on me oh no got to got to work on that Nemesis system right that's right well I got him though right in time for cry to kill me from hell's heart okay I oh who's our raid leader I need a raid invite I just saw a ranger run past me and Biz that was concerning mildly concerning I'm in danger who's our raid leader uh I'm not sure the vnar backner is on his way D fagner can give me a invite oh oh no they've beaten us to the channel point so now Things become even more challenging for us cuz we've got to balance holding off holding them off of the objective while also trying to get more resources so this is a tough spot for us to be for sure yeah is rough now we have ways to deal with that though right now there is some built-in catch-up mechanics um in a few minutes here some Scholars are going to spawn across the POI they'll be marked on our map um and they're going to increase the time it's required for the enemy to channel and drop a hefty amount of the materials we need to turn in to be able to channel ourselves okay that's good so but these guys are you know group difficulty for people above at our level um we're definitely not going to be able to send just like a small Squad of one or two people where are those where we should gather up gather up at the headquarters yep yep looks like they're popping in right now if you look at your map they're these little red swords okay let me let's get the team to kind of regroup let's regroup at the headquarters and then we can try to make our way to those locations and what are those again those are Scholars that are helping the process of channeling so if we kill them it'll make it slower for them and we'll steal some of their materials got it I am grouped up at the base that also has a respawn point they are not related facts I definitely didn't just get killed by trat oh no no that can't happen no TR has never killed anyone in his life I'm a pacifist pacifist fighter all right let's let's head out all right so there's going to be a scholar over here looks like some of our guys are already engaging it all right let's go let's do this oh we got it oh we actually already killed him you'll love to see it nice now they're really taking their sweet time going to channel though that's good so we've killed one out of four of the scholars yep yep I'm heading to the next one right now but I'm going to need some Healers want to keep an eye on them see what they're doing justo you have my focus wand no tr's here camping me oh no hate to see it okay they're definitely about to Channel or they are channeling I need heals I think we might need their Channel all right gred's down we got to take the scholar down yeah we got a good group here they are are is that so the uh the progress bar is that their Channel progress that's their Channel progress yeah oh no so it should have just gone down we just took one of the scholars down nice uh and killing all the scholars effectively doubles their Channel time okay uh we've got two Scholars left to kill if we can hold them off long enough and yeah we're almost at a 100 of the imbued blood so we still need people killing the um Bandits while we delay them with the channel nice I've engaged the next one but it seems like no one followed me here oh no going to check out their I'm right here where you just have check out their headquarters oh no I'm in danger here turn on these guys oh no I'm gonna see if I can uh try to distract them I'm at like 50% goat I think is the one oh no keenage keenage is the one he's almost at 50% no no leave me alone we need to take out keenage where's the squad it looks like all we're coming in don't mind me oh we only need two more uh we only need two more blood hey I'm just vibing over here what are you guys doing all right we got a clear key uhoh we have to clear the enemy team off the god Spike to be able to channel I did a uh did a little dive bomb on Kenan anybody that's a lot of red oh God way oh boy uhoh nice good retake down okay there we go hell well all right we've got some clerics on the point if we want to have people try to channel really it would have been embarrassing to lose to a ranger you know they're definitely pretty all right if we can push in keep heals on Zeon in take my buff let me see if I can dive bomb them again got the pocket heels down Nathan you got the pocket res no I'm never having you on my team again dude oh no zon left are you even in the raid bro how am I supposed to Res you if you're not in the raid no I fell out of the raid oh man well sounds like a skill issue looks like we're channeling oh we dropped a [Music] channel you better heal your Channeler it's going to be death from above oh no I'm trying let me give you some of May my maral abilities oh nice nice big Buffs coming through love it push oh no I'm super stunned why why it was worth the death I had to it's like he doesn't even want me to play the game got to go Zerg diving every now and then keep pushing all right Eli I Channel her Channel her get them heals on them we're pushing we're pushing nice so these uh mayoral and uh dragon abilities are pretty impactful do uh uh combat team you all want to talk through like what you guys were going for there what you're kind of seeing these look like as we kind of move forward and do uh A2 yeah I mean the the point at least of the um the flying Mount having such powerful abilities is there's there's only really expected to be one of them per side um in at least Wars like this um you know because these would be more exclusive to the to the mayor um so they're intended to be really impactful um and also a high priority Target CU you can kill the mount and you can kill the rider uh so it's on the May to to be very care ful like when they're putting themselves you know in danger to activate these abilities cuz they they themselves are such a high priority Target mhm oh man how we doing on the channel not good we keep getting pushed off of it unfortunately I think like we need to we need to try to organize everyone to move along the left side and try to push into them see if I can give us one more ability here's some let's try to push together nice I need some pocket heals on Winstead don't do that grad stop trying to kill our channelers it's not nice it isn't nice there we go nice use to the walls was this a tea party I I wasn't was not informed [Music] so we're having a lot of deaths here uh I'm sure people are uh worried about like what does war being in a war mean uh when your rate of dying probably increases a lot more than what you'd expect when doing normal kind of like PVE gam play uh yeah so during sanctioned PVP events we turn off typical death penalties right like you're not going to get um res penalties you're not going to get XP debt um you're not going to get durability damage you will still drop the things you have in your inventory though mhm or in your material inventory specifically so obviously that's like a big part of uh this game mode um as far as like the larger idea for material inventory what was sort of the the thinking behind that or is that just sort of like a convenient thing to make sure that it we're used to things oh there you go I mean don't stuff your material inventory full of stuff before you go to war makes sense to me you know when you when you're right you're right what can I say ooh okay oh my goodness oh no now we clean up that's a problem victory in death Winstead scum oh my God they've taken it back how are you guys going to take advantage of that luck bonus if you don't quite control the Zone we won Steven did we win we win you weren't even paying attention oh how did we win we finished channeling it was it was my clutch heels ignoring the siren song of juo endlessly asking for reses and focusing on real targets you guys may have won War but you will not win the the battle I think that's a little backwards well I you may say that Keenan but if you look at the point distribution we're 800 to 304 right now ooh that's right let's take a look at that how'd you guys get so many points uh well we won objectives and killed you a lot oh my God so Okay so we've we completed the the event that's obviously not the end of the war though right correct so basically the way Wars are structured is a war contains phases and phases contain events so there are conditions to win a phase and then there are conditions to win a war um winning a phase gets you some amount of like in the moment rewards and some more long-term rewards uh winning events gets you some amount of in the- moment rewards and long-term rewards and then the war is like the massive objective that you're competing to towards got it so what we have gotten if you open up your map you can hover over this blue Banner uh you notice Highwayman Hills is controlled by mirle now ah so we've made an incursion into their into their area yeah so now all of the territory associated with highw women Hills is ours and the node XP from here goes to our node um and as a way to kind of incentivize players to play here we've given a luck buff in this area as well so you can uh get increased loot drops while you're here farming for your node nice so the the citizens of Mirth are rewarded for some period of time based on the event outcome correct so if we had lost we would not be getting this buff or siphoning this node XP and Winstead would be getting this buff for successfully defending their home now obviously this is one of many different War events and one of the war event um reward types um what are some of the other events that we're going to be introducing during Alpha 2 yeah so a big one we want to do uh is the service denial so that'd be like turning off your caravaner or uh shutting down your construction buildings for a period of time right so like you've built the best blacksmith on the server and we don't want this node gearing up for something or we we're trying to compete with them and we want the best blacksmith at our node so we're going to go to war and try and shut down that service for a period of time okay cool that's awesome you know the kind of most exciting post A2 one that we want to do is uh like is Relic based where you can potten steal a relic from a node or uh destroy their Relic so it's reintroduced into the world and you can uh and now your node can acquire it awesome and then um obviously we have you know we talked a little bit about the the mount and how we're going to be moving that to um level three the level three village note for the purposes of of entrance A2 same with the mayoral abilities and and those mayoral abilities are only activatable during events or outside of the events as well so the mar abilities you used in the Showcase are only activatable during a war so that means you could activate it you know now that the event's over you could still use that ability um but only within the context of this PVP kind of state that the two nodes are in but the Mayors will also get access to like special abilities they can use during sieges as well that are uh unique to sieges oh very cool love it um now obviously uh people watching the um the Showcase today about the node War and the node War events performance is something that we are going to be getting really into over the course of the next we have gotten into over the course of the last uh couple of months but we're really going to be digging into it over the course of the next couple of months as well um what can players expect to see both on the client side and on the network side uh talk to me a little bit about that Zack that work so for the client side we really expect this to be like a seamless experience to where we're going to have some like Dynamic load balancers that help um you know the best case and the worst case where the best case is you're you know in a group by yourself and the visual Fidelity of that should be just as good as the visual Fidelity of you know the large scale seizes or node Wars and things like that so um we're be refining our character shaders and everything is going to be really in the back end right so the player experience should really be seamless and we handle everything under the hood to make sure that you know you get good frame rate during these different types of experiences and players are also going to have a lot of option when options when it comes to kind of tuning that experience for their specific Hardware uh I know one of those that we recently instituted as dlss you want to talk to me a little bit about that yeah so the dlss integration has been great uh on the 40 series in video cards we're being able to like nearly double our frame rate just by enabling the feature right so it's been a pretty big win for us yeah and then obviously um one aspect of of you know the game that you guys are are witnessing currently in the in the showcases that we've given over our different features has been you know visual effects as a whole um there is currently underway a lot of revisiting some of those effects uh from a performance standpoint um as well as from like a visual soup standpoint uh with regards to these larger scale battles and this hasn't been you know something obviously that we have traditionally focused on because you know we're still actively in the development process of these particular AR types and and all these abilities uh but now that we have kind of those base kits ready to go for for start of Alpha 2 we're going to be focus on focusing in on refining them uh and making them uh more friendly both on the performance side as well as on the visual language side uh also right K Trad yeah that's right um it's nice when those things go hand in hand like you don't want to see too much but what you do want to see you want it to look good so also not just from a um aesthetic standpoint but reading the most um important gameplay information is going to be key like we have to identify like what are the most important tphs for someone to be a to identify an ability that they're expected to respond to versus just the other kind of fluffing noise that is more for the you know the the visual fantasy of it um so we we have to kind of consider gameplay information first absolutely hey if everybody wants to come over um near the uh mirror leth side um head qus um we're kind of gathering up here as we as we finish chatting about the Showcase a little bit um yeah I mean you know obviously I think U people will kind of see the the progression that we are reaching now towards Alpha 2 there's there's a lot of kind of uh performance related tasks uh polish and and getting ready for you know external players to come in and participate I will say one thing that has been very beneficial and and the studios is uh you know very appreciative of our interaction with the Phoenix initiative group but they have been um really successful in assisting us play test you know this particular uh gameplay feature that is Wars and the war events but also you know they did so with the Caravans and and will continue to do so over the course of the next couple of months and we will begin to at some point in the very near future extend in that out um uh as we draw closer to Alpha 2 uh to some alpha 1 participants also hey let's let's keep it friendly let's keep it friendly let's not let's not attack these poor people I can solve that Stephen oh okay here we go let's see oh The Peacemaker we have done it well done while rubbing the score in our faces I know really you gotta very nice got to let them know um now mass mass combat is going to be something that is is tested as part of uh obviously Alpha 2 um you guys are seeing here a a brief taste of that um as it relates to these node Wars and these node War events um but there are going to be PVE contents raids um world bosses that players are going to be expected to kind of interact with um in a similar fashion of player density so a lot of that performance work we were talking about obviously goes to make sure that that those experiences are enjoyable um that they are running smoothly for the players um that's going to be our Focus over these next uh few months here um talk to me about war rewards um what are the the types of War rewards that we are going to be starting Alpha 2 with but also going to be implementing um in the long run Chris sorry multitasking again Stephen time yeah yeah just talking a little bit about kind of the the war rewards um that are going to be available obviously now but also as we continue into Alpha 2 what are some of those rewards that we want to kind of get up and running yeah you know there's a a large laundry list but I can hit you with a couple few here um the big ones that we want to hit are pulling up my list um so obviously like you're seeing the Buffs with winning teams I talked a little bit about like disabling Services uh siphoning gold from the enemy node uh uh we want to do temporary mayorship control where the winning mayor can kind of take over a limited uh limited control of the node that they defeat um reducing taxes for the citizens within that winning node obviously stealing their node XP which is what we're doing here um and then we also want to do stuff where this enables new content that is exclusive for the winners right like doing this means a raid boss spawns that um you know that the winners can participate in killing awesome very cool um what are some other topics that we you know I was definitely zoned in a little bit during the during the uh the game play there for the event so um what are some of the topics that we kind of you know wanted to chat about as well we can we can bring up now um I know that we had mentioned uh the um excuse me the mount abilities we talked a little bit about the mounts uh how that's going to work there's also going to be Mount abilities that are for Basic Land mounts as well um those will be at entrance uh for for Alpha 2 um so it's not that just obviously the Mayors have access to these cool you know Dragon Mounts uh but players will obviously have access to mounts and some Mount abilities um also that's work that you've been uh doing right Trad with uh with red exactly yeah um those are already in progress as well they won't be as spectacular epic and you know raid raid uh impacting as as the mayor ones cuz we have to account for potentially a hundred of them present instead of two but like you'll still have you know stuff you can do to more more at a personal level like you know getting you know like a cc break or a Sprint um you know that kind of stuff um so cool awesome um all right well guys that was fun I really enjoyed it and and you know played well and and obviously there's still a ways to go when it comes to you know continuing to develop this ahead of A2 um but I think that you know what we're looking for from the community is to kind of talk to us about how you felt with regards to the event the node War system as a whole um the mass PVP um you know these are obviously things that that we want to get feedback on um we've gotten as I said a tremendous amount of feedback when it comes to our PI testers but now as you guys are getting an opportunity to kind of see this for the first time um what it plays out as and just to remind everyone like these events are not the node War and the node war is not just these events outside of the Prime Ed events which is for a particular server location may occur between you know 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. um local time for that server uh outside of that there is still the war overall and that war overall is essentially being openly flagged uh for PvP with the citizens of the two nodes um you know give us your thoughts about that about the system it is a key component of the of the pvx aspect uh and it does carry with it some significant uh rewards obviously keeping in mind that visual effects uh performance UI are still a work in progress a lot of that is getting touched up over the next few months uh but give us your thoughts about what you saw here today with that being said I must say to our Phoenix initiative job well done your assistance is always very much appreciated as well as our glorious guests our Engineers Kyle uh Keenan Zach um along with our designers TRD and Chris and of course our lovely prod producer Nathan you guys have done a phenomenal job in standing up this particular feature for A2 I think I speak for the community when I say everyone is very excited to to play this to compete with one another their friends uh and to have some some um some rivalry in justest uh as it is meant to be obviously uh that's what MMOs are all about um with that being said thank you guys for joining us I hope you guys out in the community enjoyed it and we will see you back on stream very soon bye everybody thanks y'all cheers GG bye