Developer Livestream Transcript (January 23)

Last night Community Manager Scapes and Creative Lead Trick Dempsey hosted the first developer livestream of the new year. They recapped recent changes and talked about some of the upcoming ones ending with a Q&A session.

Video

Due to the embeded video auto playing and being unable to turn that off, I've removed the embed link for the stream.

Watch Stream Archive on Twitch

The Defiance portion starts at: 1:59:00

Topics

When is Alcatraz going to PTS?

We're doing the Valentines events right now, our hope is in 2 weeks to put Alcatraz on the PTS. We've got a couple of more things to iron out as far as player communication goes but you guys can see expeditions yourselves.

Will Alcatraz be shown on the next livestream?

There isn't anything stopping us doing it on the next livestream, but someone else will have to be doing it.

What content will be in Alcatraz?

6 new full bosses, 3 new dungeons, 13 new mini bosses, and an island that was once a prison.

What does the Night Porter outfit coming in with the Valentines event look like?

What headgear is coming with Valentines?

The Pith Helmet, a Deer Stalker cap (Sherlock), Hellbug Hunter cap.

Self Revive in Expeditions

During Expeditions only, since it's a survival challenge. If you extract you get kicked out as you didn't finish it. Also reviving someone else costs you your self revive.

The Valentines weapons are designed to be a preamble to swapping over to that system in expeditions.

So self revive timer becomes a Revive timer.

Weapon Rarity Bonuses

Some of the weapon rarity bonuses at the higher levels sometimes didn't sound great, we didn't have a system to prevent rolls of the same type so each of the tiered rolls had to be balanced on the potential rolls of the other tiers.

Now we will be preventing you from rolling the same bonuses and can make the bonuses more significant. As well as group several bonuses by type.

I believe the first wave of that will go out next week, and the full thing will come out in Alcatraz.

Armored Postal Service and other history

The APS outfit is one of the earliest ones in the game. Back when we were doing a lot of preliminary work on the game the APS was a major player in the universe. A lot of the stuff we tried to build for it didn't work out very well, it didn't turn out to be fun. Fetch quests, an entire faction built on UPS quests and make a joke on MMOs. It turns out it wasn't very fun.

The Miner outfit that people pick out in the game, we intended a miner to be a profession. When we cut that we put that in the game.

Lawkeeper used to be a profession. The professions system maybe we'll bring it back someday, right now we're focusing on expeditions.

When will challenges be fixed?

It's the same bug that caused the tutorial to become impossibly difficult, we fixed that with a band-aid fix. Now we have the real fix and it should go out soon.

Next generation consoles

We are not currently looking at next generation.

What will the size of Alcatraz be?

Alcatraz itself is a player hub, it's not very big. It's the real world size and contains most of the buildings. Parts have been leveled to turn it into camps for people.

The size of Alcatraz is not where its content is at, Expeditions add new co-op maps which can shuffle the legs of them, and different enemy sets.

How many people will the player hub hold?

The player hub will be in the world, so theoretically you could have 200 for right now and not worry too much about that. There is a lot of answers to that question.

The Expeditions themselves each individual one maxes out at 4 players, it's a drop-in, drop-out co-op thing. We've done a major overhaul of matchmaking for this.

What are the new Valentines titles?

Casanova, Charmer and complete a major arkfall and are a patron Smooth Operator.

Where will Expeditions take players?

Our initial batch of them are inside of mines, a bioman lab underground. You launch to them from Alcatraz. Those will be the first 2 environments we unlock, we will unlock more as time goes on.

Any additional moderators to assist with the forum spam?

Yes, we're switching to a 24 hour schedule for our paid moderators. Also I have put together a volunteer program using the community supporter group as they've shown trustworthiness. We'll be setting that up in the next week or two.

Improvements to taking screenshots in the game?

One of our long term goals is to get a better system in place for players to take pictures inside of the game. I want to hide the HUD and reposition the camera. It's not going to be in Alcatraz.

Are you considering an auction house?

We've talked about it. There is a lot of antique code that can sometimes be used to get a feature added quicker, an auction house would have to be done from scratch.

I prefer open markets, auction house and trading posts competing for bids. A lot of the items in the game have a inflated trade value due to a higher perceived rating, since we can't compete.

It takes a lot of work due to security like item duplication.I really don't want to be seeing that in our game, so when we decide to make one it will take time and be a major piece of content.

Additional uses for Ark Salvage?

Other than buying keys and loot? no. Well it's used inside of Sieges to power turrets, more stuff that you do like that during events is an out there thing.

What is the new Jackpot weapon going to be?

The Enervator which means to drain energy from something. It's a legendary particular mean Canker, an Infector which doesn't spawn bugs but applies a damage over time effect on enemies.

Will there be a trade chat channel?

There is a trade chat channel inside of Alcatraz. I think it's server wide, but it might be cross server. We did start work on it, but I'm not actually sure if its done.

Will Expeditions take you to Defiance?

They are headed east, this year is from the Rock to the Rockies. So end of the year will be the Storm Divide, which is closer to Defiance but I don't think we'll be going to the town of Defiance itself ever, probably it is much more likely we do things all around it. The Gulanite mines around it and the underground city are interesting environments.

Season 2 Mission 1 back?

We've been trying to reproduce it, but we can't.

The availability of that mission is based on the completion of Mount Tam Exploration IV pursuit step Complete the mission "Into the Depths".

If that checkbox is checked, the mission should be available to you. If you have completed it, you will have to complete the other season 2 missions before the replay option is available.