Todays stream featured the following Chief Rebel team members.

Hamish - Community Director
Isabell - Game Designer
Bretton Hamilton - Design Director
Paul(aka PDJR) - Systems Designer

The streams main focus was regarding the many levels of designing a hero for Fellowship, from concept to fruition. We've summarized most of the items covered below

Meiko

Hamish - Least played hero during the Alpha
Hamish - Meiko wasn't always a tank
Why do you think Meiko was the least played?
- Isabell
  - Meiko is a bit trickier to pick up and first get into.
  - Helena is the more traditional fantasy role
- Bretton
  - Helena has a clear class fantasy with the traditional sword and board, and warrior at the front of the party
  - Some people like playing monks and martial artists but it's a bit more of a niche class fantasy.
  - She was also the hero that didn't scale as well in higher difficulties.
Talk about Meiko originally being a DPS
- Isabell
  - She played similar to how she did during alpha
  - Adjustments needed to be made for threat and self healing
  - When they wanted to have 2 tanks for the alpha, they took a look at adjusting a hero and they landed on Meiko
- Bretton
  - Have people in the office that really love playing tank, and when they got a chance to try her as tank something really fit with Meiko as a tank
What kind of stuff would you like to see in the Meiko UI
- Isabell
  - We've had multiple iterations to play around with colors, icons, arrows.
  - How to make it as clear as possible while still making it feel like an RPG and immersive.
  - What's important is she has many buffs to track and it's crucial that players can track the uptime as well as the combo system

Ardeos

Hamish - Most recent DPS created as of the alpha playtest
Internal Names: Burny and Fire Boy
One of the only heroes that has the whole kit unlocked at the start.
- His kit felt empty without it
What are the top level design intentions when creating a DPS?
- Isabell
  - They wanted a fire casting character. Lots of fire, explosions, etc.
  - What is the fantasy of fire?
    - Spreads, burns, explodes, and detonates.
  - Had a few different versions before he became what he is now but the focus was also the detonation/explosion part
  - Had a version not long before Alpha that felt like it didn't lean enough into his dots.
- Bretton
  - Very early on they talk about what fantasies exist in this game what does that look like
  - What does a martial artist look like? What does our fire mage look like that feels a bit different?
  - How do we do a dot class? What does a dot class look like in Fellowship?
  - We know we need a dot class in the game.
  - While they think about the hardcore, they also need to think about the new players
Saw people talking about how certain levels Ardeos feels like you're not doing a lot but then higher difficulties he takes off.
- Isabell
  - Expected it to happen
  - Ramping classes need time to do damage
  - In lower dungeons when you're trying to compete with bursty classes it'll feel slower but when you get to the higher difficulties, when things live longer, it really evens out.
Who came up with the sassy snap?
- Isabell
  - One of those things that came up when discussing with the hero team and that it had to be something "snappy".
  - It's also a play off his cocky personality
- Bretton
  - Mechanically made sense
  - Had to be instant, and chained together.
  - One of the animations that made the most sense was the snapping as it could be chained.

Sylvie

Internal Names: Moss
How cute is too cute?
- Isabell
  - Can't be too cute
  - Can always be cuter
- Bretton
  - Originally had the opposite problem of every hero being gritty
Whats on your UI Wishlist?
- Isabell
  - Knowing when Flutterflies are available or not can be crucial
  - How many?
  - Where they are maybe?
- Bretton
  - In a weird way became their first pet hero
  - Her flutterflies are creatures and figuring out a UI to sell that is still some work that needs to be done
Can you explain Sylvies ult?
- Isabell
  - At a high level simple version: While buff is up nobody can die
    - Basically becomes one big shared health pool
    - Basically nobody can drop below 1hp while the buff is up
- Paul
  - Backend shows people dying to Sylvie ult because of the damage instance that comes right after.
Future of Sylvie
- Isabell
  - Going to look at UI
  - Look at:
    - Crowd control
    - personals
    - team defensives
  - See about her defensive flutterfly not being on her
- Paul
  - Backend shows people dying to Sylvie ult because of the damage instance that comes right after.

General Hero

How do you go about deciding what's in the base toolkit and how to add different skills when designing a hero?
- Isabell
  - Different amount of skills during each hero prototype
  - Most important to find a core rotation that's engaging and works for many hours
    - More important than crow control or defensives
  - Then they can start adding in crowd control, interrupts, etc.
  - Try to keep the toolkit to 6-8 buttons but will vary character to character.
  - When decided what should be a passive proc vs a talent
    - Shoot from the hip during playtesting on what feels good
    - Don't want to feel too stripped while also having interesting procs
- Bretton
  - Something they iterate on
  - Ex. Taking Meiko from a DPS to Tank meant a lot of DPS baseline abilities were brought over during prototyping.
    - Probably a reason why Meiko feels different than Helena in a good way.
Talking about what the future additions look like for hero toolkits
- Isabell
  - Going to take the time revisit all the heroes after working on the new melee dps.
  - Looking to see if there's anything missing rotationally
  - Damage cooldowns, CCs, defensives, etc while making sure they're unique from each other
Regarding revisiting Heroes
- Bretton
  - Helps to step away from something you're working on for weeks and months to work on new heroes and see whats working
  - Helps recontextualize things they've done and bring those things to older characters
  - Vigour and Helena are the oldest heroes but have gone through dramatic changes
Ultimate reset on death
- Bretton
  - There's a lot on the table
  - Figuring out what that looks like, but nothing to share
  - Should we stick it to the ascension system?
- Paul
  - Knows its harsh
  - Trying to make it meaningful
  - Do we stick it to an ability or an item set? We don't know.
  - Everything should come at a good opportunity cost
    - I chose this risk, I get this bonus.
    - I've chosen this security, it comes at this risk.
  - The way it currently exists will probably not end up how it is in alpha.

Dungeons

Night Patrol
- Alpha survey suggested the last boss was the most difficult boss
Wyrmheart Cavern
- Most deaths came from falling during the post campfire jump
Sailor's Abyss
- Archbishop boss was always intended for another dungeon
- Fantasy built out around a big nest of sirens and the boss being a queen of the Sirens.
- Archbishop will be returned to it's rightful home of it's original dungeon.
- The mast in the boss arena will be mechanically relevant.
  - Took fantasy references in regards to crews needing to tie themselves to the mast to not be lured overboard by the sirens.
Temple of Ur
- Boss was also not always intended for Temple of Ur.
Drakehold Terrace
- Didn't have stats of which boss gave players the hardest time but the arcane Detonations were the deadlier of the mechanics in the dungeon
General
- Is the plan for every adventure to have a dungeon counterpart or are some gear sets and aesthetics going to be unique to one dungeon/adventure?
  - Bretton
    - Its a bit more obscured in current line up
    - It's not 1 to 1 but they're looking at ways to connect them so when you're paying attention you can see how the bosses and dungeons interrelate.
    - Ex. Wyrmheart and Drakehold are connected in both style and narratively. Wyrmheart is supposed to be the intro to Cithrel
    - Allows the smaller team to make more content with less work by reusing/repurposing assets.
  - Paul
    - The sets were a happy accident to the alpha for the playtest
    - Opt to change
- Bretton
  - One of the challenges are for those who aren't used to the genre normal boss mechanics(ex. soaks)
  - Was interesting when playing with Dratnos and others that they recognized the mechanics
    - Might be challenging for newer players to the genre but the core audience knows this
  - Visual language is important to get that across

Misc

Isabell thinks Full Metal Alchemist is overrated. 🫣
Will there be support classes like Augmentation Evoker?
- Isabell
  - Its very hard to make a support class perfectly balanced
  - It has the potential to be the deciding factor between making groups that can do certain pulls really strong or not doable at all
- Bretton
  - Never say never
  - Have a lot of class fantasies they can hit first and would like to get those done
Will there be addons?
- Hamish
  - No, that is not the intent right now
- Bretton
  - We want to make sure everyone has access to the same tools to succeed.
  - Anywhere they're falling short or the community is seeking.
    - How to plan routes through dunegons
    - cooldown management better
  - Share that feedback to plan the roadmap for future features.
Will there be a roadmap released?
- There will be one eventually
- When they know, we'll know shortly after.
Will you allow players to solo, duo, trio into dungeons?
- Hamish
  - Not in the plans but they hear the converations
- Bretton
  - Really inspired when a group of people collaborate together to overcome a great challenge
  - They'd like to explore the space
  - Never say never.
  - Finding ways to give a more relaxed session or playing with less friends is compelling.
Will Sylvie get a travel form instead of a mount?
- Isabell
  - There are opportunities within Fellowship for a character to have that, yes
- Paul
  - There was a test to see what other ways Sylvie could move around

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