Q&A

[Ilyria]

QUESTION: In regards to an NPC-heavy town, how much will we be able to influence their routines so we can better fit into the county's ideals?
RESPONSE: Convince the NPCs to do what you want them to do, engage them and ask them. NPC AI will use the big 5 personality traits: Openness, Consciousness, Extroversion, Apathy, Eroticism and depending on these they might want you to do something for them in exchange first or they might just tell you to piss off.
Follow Up: How do we attract specific NPCs to our towns, or convince them to leave?
Answer: Discovery of new things (minerals and resources), new jobs will attract NPCs who are looking for work (TL;DR create opportunity and spread the word); Want someone to leave? Raise the taxes so they no longer are making a profit, draft them into a war, or make it so their needs are no longer fulfilled within you settlement. NPCs are goal driven and need to ensure they can be Fed, Clothed, Housed, Safe, etc and will move accordingly or might live off of a faith system if the fame of the settlement is revered enough to warrant it.
TIMESTAMP: 20:37

QUESTION: Will there be Port cities at the beginning and if yes, will there be direct at the sea (like Chiba & New York) or slightly further back at a river? (like Hamburg & Sevilla)
RESPONSE: Yes, but they are reserved for river and sea travel not ocean travel (like Gulf of Mexico). There will be coastal cities, ports, harbors, docks, etc but nothing for Ocean travel.
TIMESTAMP: 27:34

QUESTION: How will adding on to an existing house/building work? how freeform is it? what is the method so to speak? is it possible to make things somewhat custom or are buildings partially locked into a certain type of "upgrade process"?
RESPONSE: Build the addition on the outside of the structure/building and knock down the wall between them, or add in a door. Want to continue using the Architect tool and the blueprints system which’ll add the general outline of room (or whatever is on the blueprint).
TIMESTAMP: 29:10



QUESTION: During exposition, how much of the settlement's starting infrastructure will already be in place? Could similar sized starting towns have different infrastructure from each other?
RESPONSE: Yes, a lot of infrastructure will be there already; we expect for the settlements to largely built up already. There will be roads, water supply, gathering spots (Taverns/Inns, Town Hall, etc).
TIMESTAMP: 30:46

QUESTION: What’s the limit for choosing the settlement place?
RESPONSE: All settlements will be placed before Exposition, players will not be going into Expo with empty land plots and will not be able to plot them anywhere and there won’t be a means to move settlements. It will not be like the Sims where you can go into a world edit and move and drag things, NPCs and players alike will already be living and existing in buildings, etc. No rezoning will be possible.
TIMESTAMP: 34:07

QUESTION: How can NPCs help the building construction process? Will NPCs in town see your contract(s) for needed materials that you are requesting and decide to produce the materials all on their own?
RESPONSE: NPCs cannot and will not sign Player Made contracts, they can however offer their own contracts, if an NPC has a profession such as a carpenter who finds out about the construction and will offer their services that way.
TIMESTAMP: 36:58

QUESTION: Will there be any: Temples/Churches, Greenhouses/Sanctuaries, Colosseum, etc buildings available in the EP store? Or will those be possible with the Architect Tool if the tool is still something we'll get.
RESPONSE: Depends on the tier, at a Duke tier or higher they might be able to place a Colosseum (epic buildings will require higher tiered titles to purchase), religious buildings will most likely be available but most of the buffs will not be there unless you’re a Town or larger. The goal is to allow people to customize their town as much as they like with items from the EP store, but that settlements identity will need to be within the scope of the environment/culture/tribe/biome to be able to create that identity. Will be a mix of personal ideals and selection of settlement.
Follow Up (1): Can you describe in a little detail what buildings constitute a monument?
Answer: They are still developing this, they do not have an answer. Still balancing the EP store but it will be dependent on a lot of different variables.
Follow Up (2): Can we build large aesthetic type buildings like Pyramids, Ziggurats, or Colosseums.
Answer: Yes. Will they provide an passive/active bonus for the community? Depends on the systems we have in place. The community can build anything they want; the architect tool will allow you to build settlements or buildings as large as you have the resources, energy, and time to do. Dunno about Pyramids yet. No ETA on architecture tool; most likely between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.
TIMESTAMP: 37:47



QUESTION: What sort of controls are there to drive the behavior of a settlement NPCs as a whole? For example, will it be possible to sound an alert to send all NPCs to their battle stations, flag them to set up for the frivolity of a local festival, or gather to observe a formal occasion...
RESPONSE: Different signals can be used such as the beacons of Gondor, trumpets, city bells, that can all different per region to alert NPCs and players alive for an event or a call to arms. NPCs will work on a flag system where depending on the alert type some will go to their guard posts while others will go (to their homes to) coware in fear.
TIMESTAMP: 46:56

QUESTION: Since we hit the tunneling stretch goal, will it be possible to build a settlement underground?
RESPONSE: Yes. Came with the digging and tunneling system. It is unlikely that you will be able to build and underground settlement under another pre-existing settlement due to water tables and the possibility of drowning.
TIMESTAMP: 49:12

QUESTION: Can we build infrastructure such as bridges, aqueducts, sewers, moats, etc? (addon: including rain runoff collectors, swales, and irrigation.)
RESPONSE: Yes, this will be all within the architecture to create the blueprint to be placed where you want it to be created.
TIMESTAMP: 49:49

QUESTION: Why should a player choose a military settlement to live over a civilian settlement?
RESPONSE: Depends on playstyle/what you’re looking for. If you’re looking to become a champion or adventuring character with combat skills you’ll likely gain passives from such a settlement and learn combat skills faster than you would near a commercial district. The story of your character will also play a huge part in which would be better for you.
Follow Up: No defecation, literally unplayable.
Answer: Players/NPCs don’t poop but there will be sanitation needs for settlements to keep risk of disease from increasing. Just assume it’s happening, no animations will be implemented.
TIMESTAMP: 50:40

QUESTION: Will there be a way to know who lives in any given town if you are the Mayor/Baron/Count/Duke/King?
RESPONSE: We do not have a way to do that/know that, however if you’re renting land then there will be a contract to show that you live in that town, however if you’re leasing a room within a tavern/inn then you’re incognito - no one knows you’re there. Rulers of a settlement will always know who owns the parcel of land in order to collect taxes (if any) from the landowner, and landowners will know who they’re leasing to. There is no registrar.
TIMESTAMP: 55:00



QUESTION: Will we be able to purchase stronghold walls with EP points? (addon: As an expansion to this question will one be able to purchase a fortress/castle and/or their various components such as towers/walls with EP?)
RESPONSE: Yes. The plan is to have all these items available for EP as well as within the architect tool to create blueprints.
TIMESTAMP: 58:05

QUESTION: Will NPCs have enough autonomy to purchase land when they can and build structures without prompting?
RESPONSE: Yes, they should be autonomous enough to fulfill their needs which includes buying land, building structures, and using it or leasing/renting it out to other NPCs (players can also do this to attract NPCs and players alike).
TIMESTAMP: 59:39

QUESTION: Will you be able to purchase a school with EP?
RESPONSE: Yes. What defines a building are the things that are inside of it, if you zone out a room/space a certain size with desks and stations then it will receive the passive bonuses associated with teaching/learning.
TIMESTAMP: 1:01:00

QUESTION: What are some of the confirmed ways of expanding borders after KoE. Last week you mentioned planting trees, was that more of a way to plan an attack or does planting or building in general give you rights to that land after the 28-30days without signing a contract with the Count?
RESPONSE: Planting trees do not expand the borders of a settlement but (potentially) provides cover to sneak over the border for an attack. The main ways is through political means: The Sedecim where every 16 years (read: 16 weeks) the Nobles from all the different Kingdoms, Duchies, and Counties and they agree upon the borders - more details later.
TIMESTAMP: 1:01:57

QUESTION: How would NPC-generated tourism work? What in-game mechanics are there for drawing NPC tourists to your town? Would they come solely for trade and work purposes, or could NPCs travel to visit landmarks/locations of interest, such as melon temples?
RESPONSE: NPCs are driven by needs, some cases include religious reasons or something of interest or entertainment.
TIMESTAMP: 1:06:18

QUESTION: Are NPC families rooted to the settlement they are originally from, or will they be free to migrate to new villages & towns that are built from scratch?
RESPONSE: Yes they can migrate if there’s a need to do so. If the desire to move is greater than the need to stay they will migrate whether it is the entire family, different sectors/generations depending on the family's size then they will move.
TIMESTAMP: 1:07:36



QUESTION: During Exposition, can a mayor customize the layout of the existing settlement? For instance, can they move buildings to new locations and/or delete a building to gain EP (or some other type points) and effectively replace it with a different building using those points?
RESPONSE: No, you can’t just move buildings as NPCs and Players will own those as homes and businesses. You’ll be able to add additional buildings and structures on a case by case basis, ou as a Mayor or Baron that you own that you can customize and expand your settlement to further customize it the way you want. But no you cannot just delete someone's home (and gain EP or some other point from doing so).
TIMESTAMP: 1:08:43

QUESTION: How many soldiers will average baronies have at expo? (addon: Maybe expand this to say "How many soldiers will the different settlement types have at expo" since a lot of people presume baronies are the only settlements that can hold soldiers.)
RESPONSE: Don’t know if there is an average, depends on the size of the settlement (Hamlet +) and how much of the Barony is there to be soldiers or farmers, etc as well as how peaceful the area is that the Baron occupies.
TIMESTAMP: 1:09:58

QUESTION: Are we able to do anything concerning settlements in the MUD?
RESPONSE: No. Currently we have about 30-40 different feature areas and we’ve divided them into which we want to test during the MUD and KOE (Kingdoms of Elyria). KoE is very much designed for Barons through Kings, but it built for everyone to join in eventually however the features that will be tested between the two will be different so the Kingdom and Land Management will be Kingdoms of Elyria, while MUD is for Combat, Exploring, Living and Dying, Inventory, Crafting, etc things that won’t be Kingdom or Land Management stuff.
TIMESTAMP: 1:12:00

QUESTION: In a Coup, if a Mayor answer a count's call to arms. How will the NPC citizens / community members be drawn into an army?
RESPONSE: Tabled for later/answer withheld.
TIMESTAMP: 1:13:40

QUESTION: Is there any in-game dynamic that will tell me when I enter land that is owned by someone? For limiting trespassing.
RESPONSE: No. Only if the person posts signs. There may be a way to prevent trespassing if we implement a “No Trespassing” sign and you continue on despite the signs/warning you would then be breaking an implicit contract otherwise if it is a Town they can have bylaws that can prevent things like that.
TIMESTAMP: 1:14:10



QUESTION: Will a settlement need to meet the minimum size require first before they are allowed to have the Structure required to be considered the next? For example, a Baron has a settlement - a Town, would they be able to build a castle or does a castle need a minimum amount of plots to be constructed on?
RESPONSE: You can build (any) structure but you won’t get the bonuses until your settlement is of a certain size. So you could build a castle (on any settlement size) if you have the resources and manpower to build it but if there are passive/active bonuses you wouldn’t get them until the settlement has reached the minimum requirement size. So there are buildings you need to upgrade to the next settlement size and there are some that won’t provide bonuses until you are that required settlement size.
TIMESTAMP: 1:16:06

QUESTION: Will we be able to customize/decorate our settlements with small things like banners of the family crest, bunting and clotheslines strung between buildings or painting textures like ivy or stains onto walls, etc?
RESPONSE: You can’t paint textures, things like ivy will grow on its own. In terms of aesthetics like clotheslines and things will happen automatically depending on proximity of buildings and things based on a synergy bonus which is still a WIP (work in progress). We want player settlements to look as good as ours and want to give a reason for players to add random things like barrels on every corner, wagons in the streets, and food or other supplies in the marketplace without anyone being there or a means to prevent thief. You’ll be able to place banners on buildings/structures, there will be attachments to place them on.
TIMESTAMP: 1:17:14

QUESTION: Would an entirely NPC ran settlement be self sufficient?
RESPONSE: Yes. Otherwise it’ll collapse and not be there. That’s the goal.
TIMESTAMP: 1:21:53

QUESTION: We have seen markets and small parks in screenshots. Are there other public places, can every settlement have those and who has to build / pay for them? Are there any benefits related to those public places?
RESPONSE: Public places Yes, they’re built by anyone in the settlement by anyone who wants them there (including the people who owns the land) and some of them have benefits (passive and active bonuses).
TIMESTAMP: 1:22:19

QUESTION: Will every county/duchy/kingdom has his pre-generated Capital or can a count/duke/king take every town as his Capital?
RESPONSE: You can pick the one that you want. The difference between a Capital city is the building type, a King can pick one of the large cities and make that their Capital. When you choose your starting settlement that will be where you family lives, where you grew up, and where your seat of power is. We currently do not have the ability to separate the Seat of Power and the town you grew up in and we don’t know if they’ll change. It’s easier story wise to keep it simple this way, otherwise it makes it difficult to architect the base engine to work like that.
TIMESTAMP: 1:24:59

QUESTION: When planning for a Settlement, will the player have specific tools or aids that will assist them in judging distance and elevation?
RESPONSE: When placing down a building, structure, or blueprint it will tell you whether or not it can fit and if it’s close it will bring the terrain up to meet the foundation so you won’t have to care about the elevation in most cases but the technology to do that will need to researched/discovered so it will not be available at launch. As far as terrain types that would be best suitable for certain buildings or structures you’ll have to use common sense to know whether or not something like a swamp can support a Castle for example.
    Follow Up: Will this affect roads nearby?
Answer: Roads don’t work the same way; the road system works where players can wear out a path and lay down stones and such to create a road. There is no way to terraform for road construction.
TIMESTAMP: 1:28:35

QUESTION: How can a Mayor/settlement claim resources outside the settlements to be owned by the settlement? e.g. a mine at the other side of the mountain
RESPONSE: They don’t, that’s within the domain of a Count, so it's up to a Count to negotiate a deal to make sure those resources are harvested and delivered to that settlement.
    Follow Up: Roads build from EP be possible?
    Answer: Yes.
TIMESTAMP: 1:32:10

QUESTION: Will the material roads made out of have an effect on travel speed and how the weather effect the roads? (ex. Earthen roads becoming rutted and muddy, heavy rains flooding roads with poor drainage)
RESPONSE: Yes. Based on terrain and whether or not the road is more than just worn down grass, or a beaten path your movement speed will be affected. For example you will move slower when trudging through mud.
TIMESTAMP: 1:33:30

QUESTION: How dense are the most-populous starting cities likely to be? Will capitals look like New Haven from day 1 of exposition, or will they be more sparse with room for player-placed buildings in between the existing homes?
RESPONSE: Density is based on latency and everyone within the vicinity will need to know what everyone is doing so the technology for packing in a lot of NPCs and players isn’t entirely there but SpatialOS does make it so the world can be infinite in size (however big or small we want it).
TIMESTAMP: 1:33:45



QUESTION: For civilian settlements we know that a county could have something like: 4 towns and 4 villages 1 city, 2 towns, 2 villages, and 5 hamlets. How many and which types of military settlements could a county have?
RESPONSE: We really don’t know the answer to that yet since not all Counties are made equal. A very large County could end up with vast amounts of free range open space while smaller ones could have back-to-back settlements where it can become difficult to tell the difference between them even though politically they can be different.
TIMESTAMP: 1:35:35

QUESTION: It confuses me that KoE not having an affect on the output of a town, but if they’re saying we come in with a preset town that doesn’t make any sense either.
RESPONSE: Kingdoms of Elyria allows you to change the scope and size of your settlement. So you can use it to change and grow your settlement through the KoE game and then there’s Expo and that’s one of the main places you can use your EP to build and place items. KoE will largely be a numbers game.
    Random: Will structures/buildings affect the terrain?
    Answer: Only the foundation, usually through the addition of foundation to raise the land to equal the rest of it.
TIMESTAMP: 1:37:13

QUESTION: What is the closest distance between any given settlement? Say two settlements close enough for someone to wave to one another.
RESPONSE: That will depend on the way the settlements are laid out.
TIMESTAMP: 1:39: 46

QUESTION: Are you (we) going to be revealing any numbers in regarding to the changes in Kingdoms?
RESPONSE: We’ll announce it after working on it a little bit longer.
    Random: Tree cities or underwater cities/biomes.
    Answer: Underwater cities: No. Tree cities: Very possible.
TIMESTAMP: 1:40:44

QUESTION: Will there be any game mechanics that prevent beasts and other creatures from entering settlements without walls, or will they just go where they want regardless of a population being there? After all, mann is a predator species and beasts should instinctively avoid certain death.
RESPONSE: Yes there the animals will have reason for not wanting to enter a town, they are driven by needs similar to NPCs. So if their food source is running dry or extinct they will go into towns to eat food even if you have walls, otherwise they will continue to hunt their primary food source outside of settlements. They will react similarly to animals in real life, and most will run if they sense you’re there, their sense radius is far greater than players and if you stumble upon on a pack of wild beasts or a lone beast it most likely wanted you to find it (e.g. it was hunting you, not the other way around).
    Follow Up: If a market is open and there are no walls will animals go there?
    Answer: Yes.
TIMESTAMP: 1:42:50

QUESTION: Will we be able to use EP to benefit our cities instead of just ourselves, and if so in what ways?
RESPONSE: Yes. Expo is what this is for, we hope you don’t use it all on yourself and use it to build up your settlement.
TIMESTAMP: 1:45:45

QUESTION: How does the shrinking of borders during KoE work. Can I purposely shrink m County and allow other Counts to take some of my land?
RESPONSE: We’re still working on the scope of KoE, there may potentially be neutral domains that no one owns so the neighboring Counties may be able to consume some of that land and its people or a way to do a casus belli and you will need all the players (under your banner) to assist with this since KoE is purely a numbers game and if no one in your community joins in then you simply won’t be able to do it.
TIMESTAMP: 1:49:13

QUESTION: What will settlements look like in different regions. Aesthetically speaking.
RESPONSE: Settlements will be built with the resources native to that biome. So you won’t see stone where stone isn’t really present, or wood where there are no trees, etc.
TIMESTAMP: 1:52:42

QUESTION: If someone intends to gift their title will that happen before land selection?
RESPONSE: You can merge the accounts. It will happen BEFORE land selection. One account will cease to exist and the pledge will be moved over to the other account. It has confirmed prior to this Q&A that for such merges addon items like purchased EP will NOT carry over, only the pledge so only buy addons on one account, the main one, buy a pledge on a second account and then merge them.

What if you only want to gift the title and not the entire pledge? Then you have to,

Gift the title. It will happen AFTER land selection which is very important because it means each title's land will be selected based on the individual IP NOT the combined IP of the two accounts. Please be aware of what this will mean for any plans you might have with a friend to give them a title, the order is decided on the person giving their title away not the person receiving the title in the end. This would make it so the titles will be separate even after gifting. So if I as a Duke gifted my duchy to another Duke they would be the Duke of two fully separate duchies, whether titles can be merged together later is not known so far as I know. So until you select your Duchy>County>Settlement you won’t be able to give the title away, they’ll have to take which ever Duchy/County/Settlement you select.

Two settlements cannot be ran by one Seat of Power.

TIMESTAMP: 1:55:10

[Ilyria]

    Q:

    Would having a certain talents be seen as magic and then be considered bad?

    magic talents
    A:

    All Talents are magic. Talents tie in closely to the lore - as does Magic really. They ultimately come from the same source. If you use a Talent, you'll generally be viewed with the same negativity as those using proper magic.

    Source: https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/7382/reddit-ask-me-anything-ama-qa-compilation
    Q:

    If there are Vampires, what about werewolves and the like? Is there a magic trait to become a animagus, meaning I can turn myself into a specific animal at will?

    magic talents vampire
    A:

    So, this all goes down into the Lore, which you'll learn more about later, but for now I'll say, Vampirism can be spread... Werewolves, not so much. It's not a disease like in most horror games. Instead, it's a Talent that allows shapeshifting. Indeed, we're still trying to decide if we want it to be specific to wolves at all, or just open it up to animals in specific. The short answer is, there are were-things... but not transferable.

    Source: https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/General-Discussion/598-October-12th-Live-Chat-Q--A--Ask-Questions-Here
    Q:

    Would a Magic user be able to create a portal to physically enter the Spirit realm and gather resources their?

    magic talents
    A:

    There are Talents that allow people to enter the Spirit realm, but no known rituals to do the same. However, if someone could enter the Astral Plane through ritual, who knows what they find... or what they could do while there.

    Source: https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/General-Discussion/683-October-19th-Live-Chat-Q--A--Ask-Questions-Here
    Q:

    I’m a very selfish person and I worry that I won’t get a talent, “wyke” has a bit of an associated question which is: “I wanna be a magic user, I’ve paid my money so make it that I can be a magic user.”

    magic
    A:

    Those are good questions, they’re very closely related and it’s something that I thought about before we did the first design journal. I had this question about whether or not I wanted to talk about magic at all from the very beginning or whether or not I wanted to delay and wait until later. Ultimately we went ahead and talked about talents early on because we felt like showing our cards early and talking about the features of a soul was the right thing to do. In retrospect I kinda wish we’ had left that out at that point and approached this game as this is an MMO it’s sword&sorcery style but magic doesn’t exist in this world, it hasn’t been seen in thousands of years and just kinda leave it at that.

    A lot of people have made a comparison to our game and some other anime like Sword art online and Log Horizon. In SAO they got this concept of sword arts but there isn’t actually magic in the world at least not that seen and it doesn’t happen until later in the show. Even though there is really no connection between us and either of those shows as I was watching that it struck through that this is a combat based world, it’s a world of survival, it's a world where there are important things on the line. And magic doesn’t really play a role in this world, it doesn’t exist. And that’s kinda the message we wanted to deliver with this world, if you see people doing magic it should be feared and it should be dealt with accordingly. You are not going to see people wandering around doing magic, you are not going to have a mage it’s not going to be a big influence on the game.

    If I could ever go back and reset history and say, “listen there is no magic in this game” and people see magic and it’s going on around them and it becomes part of the story. Then everybody is kinda wondering, “what do we do now? How do we deal with this? Is this a character mechanic? Is there some way for us to get this? What do we do?”

    The best thing I can tell people at this point is, it’s going to be extremely rare to the point where it is almost non-existent. We still hope that people won’t feel like the fact that some small percentage of people who are out there can get it and everybody can’t other than that is going to be a game changer for them. The other thing I can tell you is that magic and the existence of magic and kinda how prevalent it is, is a main part of the story line. And I’m not saying that magic will ever become common place, that would certainly go against what we’re trying to achieve in the world. What I can say is that we have intentionally withhold enough about the magic system so that you guys don’t have a clear picture yet about how magic works, how common it is, or whether it’s something you would even want if you could. So at this point I would just say don’t worry about it until we are able to tell you a little more about how the magic system works and you might find that it is less of an issue for you.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    So essentially what you’re saying here is that “hey this is a world of combat and magic is one of those really unknown things that people in this world don’t even know it exist”. So if everyone could all the sudden say I want to be a mage, I paid money, let me be a magic user. Your argument is “well no one is a magic user.”

    magic
    A:

    The way I would respond to that question directly is you actually did pay money, but you paid money to be a champion, an explorer, a producer, a gatherer, you paid money for the experience and to be part of the story. And if it turns out that your character actually has magic that should be looked as it’s not actually what you paid for, that comes separate.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    That leads to our next question: Prime says I’m afraid that most people with talents or story souls will never know, so the 5% will look like 0%. I’m actually going to add on to this question a little bit too. Is 5% of souls and not 5% of players is that correct?

    souls talents
    A:

    It is 5% of Souls; correct.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    So what that means is that when I buy the game I get 3 souls and I might not even play all 3 of them. And there will be some souls that people have played that could have had talents but they didn’t play them. Is that also a potential?

    talents souls character
    A:

    We have had this question once before and it has been addressed, on the forums previously, but I wanted to answer it here as well. For us the concept of talents is really there not as character building tools they are story building tools. People are thinking about talent as a character building mechanic it makes them stronger somehow. Though often times the talents are not gonna make you stronger they are going to make you a target. So that’s not really something you’d want.

    Though with that said, we want these to be a tool for story building and so one of the ways we’ve done this is just kinda randomly distributing these as we know that eventually their use is going to play a role that will cause a story to happen. It’s kinda the organic story it is not contrived it’s just something that happens to some person, they are not prepared for it and it leads to an interesting personal story for them.

    We do have this concept of an overall 10-year story and for those scenario we will find places where we want there to be talented play. It’s imperative that a talent exist in order to the story to make sense and in those cases whether or not a person had a talent, otherwise or not it’s entirely likely that we will take the person who is the closest to the storyline, who’s in the best place to make it come true and we will give them the talent in order for that to happen. So they’ll never know whether or not they had the talent to begin with or if it was gifted to them to be part of the story.

    Ultimately it’s the same, it means that out of nowhere completely unexpected they had an opportunity to play a role in the story, they have the opportunity to steer it one way or the other, for good or for evil and that others around them who don’t have those talents will have the opportunity to choose whether or not to follow them, to support them or to oppose them. In a lot of times that would also depend on the choice the person with the talent makes. Whether or not they are supportive of the objective of everyone else or if they are not.

    So if you have a talent and you decide to use it for evil, those around you who are on a darker path might support you, or those who oppose you will make you their target number one.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    You touched on something I have never heard of before, so I’m going to reiterate it You said that the Soulborn Engine is smart enough so that there is a person or a player who is ready to go down the path for magic use, the engine might say “this person is in best position to take advantage for the story arc.” Even though the soul had not the talent from the beginning the soul will now have the talent because he’s progressing through the personal story. Is that correct?

    souls talents magic soulborn-engine
    A:

    That is correct.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    So that eases a lot of concern in my mind. Because me as a player my thought is “how can I go out there and make the most of this subscription and this life, and do something that is interesting and different. I am exploring and I come across a particular story arc that all of a sudden takes me down that particular path or road and it’s something players can actively seek and search for if they desperately want a talent and knowing that eventually it would be possible for one to be assigned to them. Correct?

    talents story soulborn-engine
    A:

    That is a good way to look at it, I think the best way to look at it is that. We want to reward people for being heroic, we want to reward people for creating story. While we do see the world with these talents as a way to kind of create an expected story. Those who pursue it, those who put themselves in the path of being legendary heroes, they are going to find they are statistically more likely to encounter those kinds of talents.

    It’s not because we are trying to rewards people directly, if you go out and kill a demon and we give you a talent. It’s more like I am going to go out and kill a demon because it’s something my character should do, and you get close to do it but you are going to fail on your own. The engine recognises that you are playing a pivotal role or catalyst for a larger story and it uses that to give you that talent. I don’t want to encourage people to do heroic things because they feel like the Soulborn Engine will save them and it will give them the talent at the last minute, but it’s true going out and becoming an active part of the story will end up giving you a talent more often than not; and by not I mean not more often than not doing it. If you weren’t planning on having a talent, or the engine wasn’t going to give you a talent to begin with. If your character, one that was randomly created didn’t have a talent, the chances of getting one is much higher of getting one if you integrate yourself into the story. Than if you don’t.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Alright knowing that we have limited time I’m going to move onto the next question that I’m dying to ask about more about that particular subject, BUT we’re talking about story and Prime asks “How will players even know what their story is, it is random for their soul and I haven’t seen much on it. Can you elaborate on destiny and how it will interact with player story?

    destiny player-story
    A:

    We talked about this in a previous design, around DJ#3 or DJ#4. The Soulborn Engine is a multi-layer system, and what I mean by that is there are things happening at different levels; there is an eco-system and if you go out and kill a slew of animals then it is going to break the eco-system and that is going to cause a chain of events that will ultimately lead to some kind of a scenario. There will be a story element there.

    I hate to say quest, that word is over-used and it is something we try to avoid using in Chronicles of Elyria if we can, but think of it as a quest. There will be a quest that comes up as a result of the fact there is an imbalance in the ecosystem. That is a result of player-action but it is not tied into the story or destiny system. It is a result of player action, cause and effect as a result of things they do in the world. But as a result of this, it gives them other things to do and it is one of the ways we try to keep the player engaged.

    Then there is this concept of the personal story and this is tied to your birth date. So from the moment you character is born into the world, they have a series of tasks that are going to be assigned to them and again it’s randomly distributed based on your birthday. Without going too much into the astrology of it, you might find that for one reason or another, your character is destined to oppose women.

    I am using it as a random example as it is a conversation I was having recently. But because of this, your character just struggles with the opposite gender. We don’t know why it just does, as a result of this we might find as you travel from town to town the NPCs whose personality traits, which we use the big 5 personality model (O.C.E.A.N), you might find that the NPCs you encounter who are not open to you based on the openness attribute tend to give you a hard-time. Maybe they send you to do tasks which are counterproductive, they kind of control you.

    So your story is you are constantly being trolled by the women in your life, that is something that we didn’t plan for exactly, it’s just kinda how the engine worked it out based on the results we came up with for your specific character. So it is not something that you have to look for, not something you have to hunt down for your story, it is just going to be your play experience and you’re going to know it. Because wherever you go, whatever you play things are going to be popping up for you that are based on your personal story. That is one layer and I’m going to regret using that example about versus women.

    That is actually what sparked that conversation, we can follow up with that offline. There is obviously the Destiny engine as well, the Destiny engine is a higher part of the story engine, it is not just your birthdate, there is this overall 10-year story and I like to compare it a choose your own adventure book where there is lots of difference choices in any one point in time. There isn’t a single outcome there might be a dozen possible outcomes.

    We break this story up, as we choose the title “Chronicles of Elyria” as opposed to “World of Elyria” or “Elyria Online” or any other name, because the concept of “Chronicles” to us speak to us of texts, of books, of epic novels and that is what we wanted to recreate with this game, this idea of you living out this epic story.

    So we have divided up this 10-year story into books, and each book is going to last about a year, there is about 10-books in this story, these books are further divided up into chapters and the chapter for us could be months. What happens is that at the transition point, at the inflection from one chapter to another, we don’t know what the players are going to do, how they’re going to come out of that chapter. At any one time, the engine is always looking at how close you are to one of the possible outcomes and it is trying to drive you to one of those outcomes. It is introducing quests, creating conflict and introducing NPCs that have certain personalities so they grow up and have conflict.

    The choices that the players make might steer them towards one of the others, as soon as they do, it adds weight and credibility to it and drive them to that other step. This whole story is built around this concept of triggers and things that players can do, and it might be that they can start heading in a direction that we didn’t anticipate at all and it has something to do that is cataclysmic or awesome or whatever. But we don’t have the whole story upfront, we have a plan for an overall and we do have writers on staff and as things progress we have the opportunity to respond to things as necessary. This isn’t something players need to look for it is something they will be involved in whether they wanted to be or not.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Really quick, I wanted to point at something really quick; the story engine that people might have if you bring it up. Is that “is it going to make me do something that I do not really want to do” and I remember something from a DJ that was suggesting that the Soulborn engine takes into account your affinity if you are light or dark, so this wouldn’t put anybody in a position to go against the type of character that they’ve developed or saga they’ve developed for themselves, correct?

    soulborn-engine character
    A:

    Correct, it is important to point out that what is presented to the characters in general is not going to be a quest to go and do something. What is presented to the characters is a conflict, a struggle and a problem. How the player chooses to solve that problem is up to them, and as their affinity guides them to one way or the other, then it will be clear what the intended outcome is, but the players will have the opportunity to fulfil the requirement or go opposite to it.

    When I talked about the Birth Date and the conflict and the things that are likely to happen to a player I should have been very specific in saying the conflicts I was using with the women, in that wherever you go you are always in conflict with women, you have an opportunity to choose how to resolve those conflicts and there might be multiple ways in how to resolve those conflicts. Some on the light side, some on the dark side.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Story question “I imagine without raids there won’t be any really strong monsters that you need more than one person to defeat” what is your response to that?”

    story lore
    A:

    I was looking through this list of questions and I choose to put this one in the story category as opposed to content or something like that, to remind myself how to answer this question.

    Which is if you have read any of the lore by “Anara Starsong”, then you already know that there is believe that the Ancients, antepyrovian, have been awakened and I wouldn’t say that there are not going to be any strong monsters in the world for you defeat. I’ll just leave it at that.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Fantasy versus realism: “I’m worried about the non-realistic elements, I don’t like having sorcerers, vampires and dragons running around, those are exactly the things that can unbalance the game; an overpowered sorcerer, a powerful vampire an immortal army etc.” so what this is getting to is game balanced, traditionally MMORPGs everyone is balanced, maybe different levels but all the same power level. So maybe that is where his concern is coming from is the traditional sense of RPGs.

    design character-balance character
    A:

    I also put the story section right below fantasy & realism to remind myself to flow from the question into this one in which she says “I worry without raids there isn’t any strong monsters that require more than one person to defeat” and right after that Ender calls out that there are going to be these Sorcerers and overpowered vampires and immortal armies and that sort of thing and those cause a problem with game balance.

    And actually Ender’s question is my solution to the previous question. We have intentionally introduced the opportunity for the player’s and the world to become overpowered, to become unbalanced; the ability to become a super powerful sorcerer, the ability to become the most powerful vampire or the head of an entire coven of vampires, or even the rumour of their being the ability to become a lich or having this immortal army or necromancy.

    The ability to raise the dead, those are not going to be things that are going to sit well with most players, and so the objective here is that when somebody does become the overpowered sorcerer or the powerful vampire that everybody else that is looking for a raid boss now finds one. So it is our intention that these imbalances create player content, it is by design.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Kind of thinking about that in a world where obviously perma-death is a thing, and you have these ultra-powerful players I can immediately see the concern that someone might have of this like “ultra-powerful players are taking not only my characters into their hands but my pocket books into their hands” and so we know that the Soulborn Engine is smart enough to distinguish between PC and NPC, is it smart enough to distinguish between a PC with talents and a PC without talents. So would the risk be lowered for trying to go after these guys.

    soulborn-engine
    A:

    I’m not sure I fully understand the question.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    So basically if I am killed by a PC, the Soulborn Engine recognises he was killed by a PC his spirit loss from spirit walking would be a certain amount, now I’m killed by a PC with talents, so I decided to go after them, or they decided to grief you because you’re overpowered. Because you are introducing a OP player that can take my pocket book and experience into their hands, is there a way to balance out the penalties from being murdered by these people.

    story balance soulborn-engine
    A:

    Obviously there is a lot of areas in here where we are not going to know fully. Generally, anytime we approach a problem, there is a sweet spot here, there is going to be place that things feel too overpowered that these OP players become so OP there is nothing anybody can do about it. Then on the other end these players become OP so little that no-one knows they even exist in that they have power and it’s useless by and itself as it is not creating the story we want and is not creating content. We want to get players into the world, in alpha and beta and have vampires and sorcerers running around so we can see what it takes for players to incite revolt. How powerful does a vampire have to be for a village to rise up and attacks them. On the other hand, if we make a vampire that powerful what’s the cost to the community.

    As it stands now, there’s no checks and balances in place because it is pretty early on, but again we want the powerful vampires and OP sorcerers to make people want to attack them. If they’re this super powerful vampire living quietly in a castle in the edge of a village not really doing anything, then we’re kinda failing from a story writer perspective, because we’ve introduced something that should cause a story but it’s not. So we need to make them overpowered enough to create the opportunity for story.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Vampires do they sparkle, are you drawing inspiration from twilight for vampires?

    vampire
    A:

    No, Vampires don’t sparkle. we mentioned before that you won’t actually be able to tell easily whether or not somebody is a vampire because if you have this very powerful vampire who’s doing bad thing and everybody wants to raise up and find them. part of the story is detecting who it is. you know it’s a game of murder and mystery, so if they’d sparkle in the daylight it would be a little bit easy. What I can say is that the next design journal we talk a bit about anonymity as part of our discussion an identity, disguises and reputation and one of the things we talk about is how you can throw on a cloak. And when you throw on a cloak, even if you recognise someone previously, even if you know who they are from sight, they do have a nametag over their head, you have encountered them enough that you want to be able to spot them in the crowd. If someone throws a cloak over their head, they are not gonna be spottable out in daylight or even at night. You’re not gonna know who they are, and that same cloak can be used by vampires to allow them to move about between building during daytime. You probably look suspicious to someone, if it’s middle of the day and you walking around in cloak. And if you’re sheriff or someone who has legal reason to do so you might wanna go have a conversation with them but in general vampires are very powerful and they only get more powerful as time goes on and they are strong, fast.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Do they [vampires] burn in daylight?

    vampire
    A:

    They do burn in daylight, there is a DOT that hits them in daylight if the cloak is removed from them or they are otherwise engaged in combat and they cannot use their abilities during the daytime where the DOT starts as well. As far as we know on this point, daylight and one other way are the only two ways to defeat a vampire.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    Just to clarify DOT is Damage over time, like they are poisoned in the daylight. Let’s move on to the next questions: The game focuses on realism and not being a WoW-clone. I really don't think that is the focus it’s just happen to not be one. Will the devs implement some game mechanics that are simply not fun, some mechanics sound nice in theory but they would not be enjoyable for some players when implemented?

    damage game-mechanics
    A:

    I touch on a couple little parts there, there is a focus on realism, but it’s realism for a purpose, if you look at a game like ARK they have realism for the purpose of having realism. They wanna create that realistic feeling, they want you out in the wild. They want you afraid, you’re wandering around in a world of dinosaurs, they want the heartbeat, you need to make sure you keeping track of different things at once.

    The realism for us is a means to an end, I can’t stress that enough, we got a lot of realistic elements in here, we got the need for food, the need for water, the need for sleep, those are means to an end, they are not the focus of the game, we don’t want them to be the foreground, we are working on a system to try to make them there and something you are aware of but not overbearing. Like you are in town and the need to go into a tavern to socialize, this is an example of us using food in town as a means to an end, it's a way to get people to socialize and to congregate in a place other than in front of an auction house.

    But that being said the real reason we have this realism mechanics, is so that we give opportunity for dynamic stories. You’re out in the world, it's night-time, at night your fatigue goes down quicker than is does during the day so it's a good time to rest, you could rest during day obviously but it’s better at night. That requires you to pitch a tent or a campsite and you want food and you want water and you need the things you’re gonna do, we also give people the opportunity to play card games or dice games, they can sing and do their bardic things while they're gathered around the campfire and tell stories and all that, the real reason we do that is so you have to set up a tent and light a fire if you want to cook food.

    And if anyone has watched LOTR, remember the part where the party is out in the middle of the plains and they find the highest point where they can light a fire in middle of the night which draws the attention of everybody around. And that's what we’re trying to recreate is this scenario where you march all day and halfway in the night to a nearby county of duchy that you’re trying to invade. There’s a castle there that got an ancient evil in it or whatever the scenario is... It’s the middle of the night, you are tired, you’re in an eyeshot of this ancient keep. Are you really gonna pitch a tent in the middle of the night and start a fire, so you can recover that energy. Or are you going to instead sleep in the dark and in the cold and risk anything around you that you can't see coming in your campsite, or intentionally not sleep and engage the ancient keep not fully rested the next day. It’s an opportunity for players to think about how they want to approach the scenario and we use these realism mechanics as a way to drive those.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    So I think you touched a lot of the fun parts about realism, what about the not so fun parts. You and I have both played ARK: Survival Evolved and you notice that as time goes on, you realise, ok before I go here and do this and I have to go here and do that, I have to gather up the food, I have to cook the food, put most of it away in the refrigerator, gonna have to jerky it now so that way it lasts a little longer, now I have that all done I have to craft arrows and everything becomes a chore before you can actually start playing the game. Will this realism become a chore or is it designed in such a way that it will not?

    mechanics design
    A:

    It is designed is such a way that it will not. We will know once we get people in and playing whether or not something becomes tiring after a month of weeks or 2 months or what the timeframe is. also the use OPC to do a lot of the more mundane task, preparing the food and stuff like that as well as having people whose careers are bakers. means that people who are having a passion for those things are less likely to get bored and will focus more on those things. While people who don't want to spend the time cooking meals, they can just buy their rations from the taverns or pick them up on the way out of their journey. We really want these realism mechanics all sort of the background. It's sort of those things where the better it is the less you notice it, and when people are noticing it we need to revaluate it because we don't want that to become the focus of the game.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh
    Q:

    While at the same time it's a survival game... I feel like I had to bring that up, starving to death and then being rescued by someone the last second where he passes me a steak. We still going to have those moments correct?

    survival
    A:

    Yeah, it’s one of those thing where we want it to become a background thing until it’s not. It should be a background thing to prepare food, to sit and eat. You shouldn’t wanna sit and eat because it's a good time to socialize and do other thing that you are more interested in doing. But if you don't do those things, if you fail to do it, if those background task become forgotten completely, we do want those side effects. Because there's a story in those too. If you don't prepare enough food or water if you are out in the desert, that's a story in itself.

    [BW] Or you get raided by bandits and they take all your food.

    [Caspian] Exactly! I'm actually waiting for that. I relish the day that somebody comes and robs me and leave me there strapped to a wagon in nothing than my underpants. There may be screenshots of that.

    Source: Chronicles Of Elyria: LIVE - Q&A Session with Jeromy Walsh