I interviewed AGS and they dropped some BIG INFO (Throne & Liberty)

guys so it happened I'm here and I have an opportunity to talk to AGS directly and that's exactly what we're going to be doing in today's video don't forget to like And subscribe for some of you guys who have who have been following my content excuse me uh some of you guys may know that I was able to talk to NC soft directly about throwing Liberty and today I get to talk to AGS and apparently you are the go-to person to talk to would you uh mind introducing yourself and tell us who you are sure yeah so my name's Daniel uh my developer name is is Tico so feel free to call me Tio if you prefer um at AGS my role is globalization design manager so really that's a fancy way of saying I'm responsible for coordinating with NC soft uh talking with them about a lot of the systems that are making their way into the game uh obviously taking the feedback from our players here um in our regions uh and making sure that NC soft is aware of them as well uh so that's the role I hold gotcha so um I've been told that you have a pretty solid experience and background when it comes to actually playing the game Throw Liberty can you tell me a little bit about maybe your play experience there yeah it's pretty varied because of course we play a lot on our internal servers as well as we prepare the version for our launch I've probably done the leveling experience 50 times something like that so I also play some on the Korean servers um when time permits of course uh and we also have an own internal server we actually have a tenant on our team one of our core tenants is to play the game so we feel very strongly that uh we're at our best if we play the game if we play the game we know what our players are going through we know what they're feeling and so we want to make sure that internally we're playing the game as well so we have play times that we set up with our teammates uh we do a lot of the shared content of course you know bigger things like Castle sieges are a little bit more difficult to coordinate but we really make a huge emphasis to play the game across the team right so from my understanding you're kind of the point man when it comes to that direct communication with NC soft when it comes to throne yeah I mean I think it's a team effort so I don't want to say I'm the only person here uh but I do communicate them frequently especially as it relates to a lot of our uh gameplay related topics okay so I want to get straight into this we'll try and keep this short you guys know how long my videos get every time I say that but um okay so can you tell me a little bit about that the dynamic between you guys in NC soft because you know developing a game and Publishing a game is very is very different uh usually the developer has a lot more control with the actual product can you tell me how much influence you guys actually have over thrown Liberty yeah so I want to back up to the kind of earlier part of your question which is to sort of reiterate that I would agree the relationship between the developer and the publisher is really crucial um if you have a strong foundation and a strong relationship there then you're going to have an opportunity to do something really great with the game um and I think that we have that with NC soft you know we signed this game about 18 months ago now um and since the beginning we've had this sort of shared Vision that we would operate sort of as one team uh with one version of the game uh and that's paid off tremendously um I think if you look you know you probably know from all the time that you've played you look at all of the changes that the game has gone through uh they're massive and I think the game is in a much different place now uh than it is then um so we have a lot of healthy debate about topics we communicate frequently maybe they're tired of hearing of me I don't know uh we talk so much but um we really do have a lot of uh really healthy back and forth and we're together in it and that's how we see it gotcha so I have to ask you I did po I publish a video when I went to NC soft had a chance to talk to him directly as I mentioned in the intro did you guys watch that video by any chance did you watch it by any chance I did watch it okay so I'm I have to ask this is very like this is a personal question I want to know did that was there any conversation maybe after that or even before even prior to that about the monetization because let's be real here the monetization practice in the East versus the West they're very different right I know for a fact that Koreans also don't really like pay to win but I could also say that they're definitely more tolerant to it than in the west and you know I told them in that interview which I stand by this statement that regardless of what I think there are certainly a lot of people that have called throne in Liberty because you could purchase Lucent they've called it pay to win trash like verbatim right now our version is for sure as someone that has played the game extensively is for sure less pay to win than the Korean version lost AR is also less pay to win than the Korean version and obviously the one game that you guys did develop new world that's one of the three MMOs two or three MMOs that are like you know everyone knows it's not pay to win right now what I want what I would like to know is has there been a lot of discussion how much discussion has there been around the pay to win and is that something that you guys really pushed back on with NC soft or were you guys just like hey let's make money buy and loose it or selling yeah I I would sort of echo what I I said on my previous statement right which is we really view it as a part ship um so we talk about all topics we talk about our business model we talk about gameplay and so when I think about thrown in Liberty what I think is if I compare it to other free-to-play MMOs on the market it has one of the most fair business models out there why do I think that uh all progression is available to all types of players all of our core game content is available to all players without a pay wall none of our purchases are random it's direct purchase um business model so everything that you purchase you know exact what you're getting back um and we intend to be also um uh we intend to be generous as well um and it's not just in what you purchase being generous but also some of the changes you're probably aware of like with the abyss dungeon drop rates that were increased significantly and buffed and so that's where I think that we are with the business model right now thr in thrown in Liberty so what they have done uh I mean every MMO has more vertical progression as a Vertical Press game uh but when you have a system where you can purchase Lucent or buy gold um when anytime you add more vertical progession systems it becomes you know more pay to win simply because there's more things to pay for now if you've played thrown in Liberty a lot of the people that kind of try to defend the game they say well the pay to win isn't bad because you can hit the caps and the gear levels that a Pay to Win player can obviously it will take you longer but you can reach it versus in other games where you can never reach the power level uh in performance of a Pay to Win player and thrown they've actually made it easier over time to trade out your gear for those of you who don't know who trade what trading is just think of it as making your character stronger okay but like you trade out your gear um and that system has actually been alleviated what my question to you sorry for the long question is how much are you guys paying attention to the uh progression rates so for example if we were to release tier 2 gear trait residents out the gate I mean that is going to be a huge power discrepancy between pay to win and free to play free to play will never catch the Pay to Win how important is it for you guys uh and how much are you monitoring that progression speed and is it something that's on your plan to allow players free-to-play players to realistically hit these caps before increasing vertical progression yeah I mean it's way up there on our radar it's one of the things that we're going to monitor most often I would say both for progression but also content release Cadence you know that's a big part of how quickly we want to release content because we want to make sure that players have hit an appr appropriate power level before we're putting new content in front of them or a new vertical Chase in front of them as you said uh so that's a big part of that uh it's one of the reasons why for example we don't plan to release uh tier 2 gear when we release our two star dungeons um we think that you know we will end up releasing those sooner than they were in Korea and if we release tier 2 gear we think it's too fast you know it's not appropriate for a player base to have to move that quickly into the tier 2 gear set uh so we're very aware of that and we absolutely want to make it so that players feel that they have a chance to really progress through what they're experiencing right now get a full build enjoy that build uh before they enter kind of another Chase for power so are you saying that you're going to make sure that the pacing is done in a way where free-to-play players are going to reach caps be able to enjoy being at the same level of players who are paying um before you re reach before you increase the cap and and do things like introduce tier two gear it's a tough question because you know that generalizes sort of an a player base right and so it's l about the type ofender that you are and it's more about where is our player base as a whole moving forward um and so what I am saying is that we want to make sure that uh we have our player base in a healthy state where they're ready for new content or ready for new progression um and so it's less about are all non-s Spenders uh in a certain place and it's more about is there enough mass in the audience that we're actually ready to to bring on new systems or new content Bing was a major issue in Korea huge issue um from my understanding obviously a lot of things have been changed in Korea with how you go about upgrading your gear and from my understanding uh some of that was done to combat botting Now Bing is way less of an issue in Korea but there's also less players playing in Korea obviously the launch of a game versus 10 months later in the west a free-to-play game usually is just Infested by Bots and AGS doesn't have the best track record with Bots when it comes to Lost Arc it has improved in Lost Arc now tremendously but the player base also came down there's going to be a lot of players playing thrown in Liberty at launch is there a plan in place to prevent Bing how confident are you with that yeah so I think you touched on a good point which is the Improvement right and I think there's a lot of lessons learned that we have from our previous games that we're bringing into throning Liberty so that we're more prepared at launch time um there's several things that we're doing for bot detection and other things um so we are heavily focused on making sure that we're ready to combat Bots and there's probably one thing that I would kind of explicitly call out which is there's sort of two re uh avenues for preventing Bots one is detecting them and of course trying to ban them another is just making it more difficult for them to actually do business you know how do they impact the economy how do they exchange goods things like this um so one of the things that we'll be doing is our player trust system so some of our players um from other games may be familiar with that we'll be bringing that into thrown in Liberty as well uh with some improvements um and the auction house will be restricted to trusted players um so that's one of the things we're doing don't want to reveal too much uh but we are hyper aware about Bots um and we are definitely bringing those lessons learned from previous games into the throne launch in Korea i l a big Alliance of players and we were playing competitively and there is a huge emphasis uh not exclusive but there is an emphasis on competitive play between guilds going for the castle and all these things there are rankings how hard are you guys going to crack down on like AFK macroing is that even allowed uh boding and essentially kind of cheating the system because we felt like in Korea we're going against these other guilds and alliances that were really cheating their their activity points and we kind of felt cheated by the system because they weren't being banned and we're trying to do it legit is this something that you guys are going to crack down on you know I would think of that as a way that when I view that it's how do we uphold the Integrity of the game by we I mean the publisher we the developer NC soft the players the community um so we all have to work together to uphold kind of the Integrity of the game make sure that we're trying to stamp out that type of stuff I'm not personally kind of responsible for the policies and procedures we have for that we we have separate teams that really monitor and do all of that but my opinion as a player as a personal player is you know that type of blatant cheatting doesn't belong in the game and so I think that we will make an effort on that to be clear is AFK macroing going to be allowed I believe in NC at I believe in Korea NC soft did make a statement because at the TL Meetup Korean players pressed them because there were a lot of Korean players that are like hey um you know you have a uh a specific mouse that allows kind of like macroing and stuff is this allowed you know this isn't Bing it's AFK macroing are you guys going to allow it because I believe ncof said no for the Korean version yeah I mean what I think is that you should be at your station if you're playing the game if you're on a PC or on Console since we're crossplay you should be sitting at your keyboard if you're playing the game um and so that's the type of Integrity that we hope to maintain within thron and Liberty so Milestones are a big thing in throne when can we if you can answer when can we expect the first castle Siege to take place uh yes so Milestone system I want to say two things about it one is it will be a little bit sped up um compared to what it was in the Korean launch um and so that will play out in various types of content not just the castle Siege as you said Boon stones and World bosses and stuff like that right now the cast Castle Siege which you will notice at launch in the Milestone system but it's set for Mid November um so roughly that six to seven week Mark after after launch is what it set for right now we monitor it you know maybe the as I mentioned before the audience isn't quite ready for it the player base isn't quite ready for it um so we might make an adjustment but that's what it's you know we're targeting mid November right now do you have any timelines in mind when you will when you are planning on introducing tier 2 gear it's a tough question because we have to see how our players progress you know we have some idea of it because you know we've looked at some of the anonymized data from the Korean service so we have some idea of how players progress through thrown in Liberty of course um but we're a different region you know things have changed in the game the pacing at which you might be able to progress is different uh maybe some of our rewards have increased or decreased you know all of these things play a factor nobody's actually played this version of the game yet um and so we do have a Target that we're looking at which is probably in late q1 but let's see you know let's see how the players progress we want to be flexible because what we don't want to happen is that we're just gatekeeping content we don't feel that's the right thing to do so we want to have Targets in mind that we're aiming for or shooting for but if it's appropriate we want to move that forward Ward or backwards to make sure it matches the pacing of our players to Landry was a huge expansion that just dropped I mean it was massive the world size almost doubled and along with it came a lot of content do you have any timeline for maybe when tandry is going to come out yeah I think I'm going to sound like a broken record a little bit here uh so quickly just say again I think it depends a little bit on how players are consuming the existing content pre tandre um but we are targeting for late q1 there so runes trait resonance substance TR for those of you who don't know what that is it's more vertical progression keep in mind you have to add vertical it's the vertical progress game this isn't like a Guild Wars 2 this is a vertical prog progression game game has been out for 10 months in Korea and this was the latest vertical progression systems introduced to the game uh along with the Tandra expansion how long do you think until we get those yeah those are a bit trickier because you know I would say they're not in our launch version uh so they won't be there in our launch version and that's something that we're still working with NC soft we think maybe it needs to mature a little bit more before we bring those systems into our version um so we don't actually yet have a full timeline because we're still working through that with ncof figuring out what types of tweaks um we can make into them what we don't want to do is introduce systems that are you know not really ready or going to be really favorable for our player base um so that's why they're not in our game yet what I would say is that we have pled specifically to not introduce runes and trait residents at the same time uh this just kind of goes back to what you were mentioning before about the progression um and we feel that that's probably a little bit too much um especially because as maybe we're catching up or going a little bit faster um than the Korean Service um we don't want our players to feel a little bit too much pressure there so we do plan to release runes and trade resonance at separate times for those of you who don't know the sign significance of that it that's significant that's that's awesome I'm actually like I'm hearing this for the first time and that I think that's fantastic I think that's really goodes I want to follow that up with another question though because runes are directly tied to challenge dungeons now challenge dungeons is something I feel like a lot of people are looking forward to for those of you who don't know challenge dungeons are essentially like Mythic plus dungeons but in thrown Liberty does that mean we're not going to really see that content until obviously the runes are released way later then well first of all I don't know that the runes necessarily have to come way later you know let's see if we can make those tweaks or adjustments that are needed that we feel like the system is where our player base would be happy with it um but I don't think that those systems necessarily have to be connected I know they are right now as a reward structure but I think other things could be found there so I I wouldn't say that challenge and runes have to be together they are right now I would say it's probably a goal of mine personally that they still be um but we want to make sure that they both make sense but they don't have to be together so there is a CH there is a possibility that some of the content that we get in our game will give different rewards possible It's Tricky it's a tough answer because as I mentioned before we want to be in this kind of one version um so really it's more about how do we work together with noft that we create a palatable version for all players you know all International Players across all regions and that's that's kind of that sweet spot we're striving for gotcha substance transformation is a system that I there's no way I can explain it right now for this video but you can look it up but this is you essentially feed gear into a system and then you get these fragments that are used for the trait residence as well as as well as gear like a random piece of gear this is a system where a lot of people feel like could completely change the launch of the game which you confirmed it's not going to be in our launch simply because you can get boss gear that hasn't really been unlocked when you do introduce the system if you do introduce the system my question to you would be number one are you planning on making any adjustments and number two well I guess this is the same thing as number one but like like would you lock out specific pieces of gear from being obtainable through that system yeah I think this is a good example of where different rewards could be possible mainly because we're at a different state in the in that player Journey that we talked about before right yall are already in the level 55 cap in the Korean Service our players won't be there and so uh this is an area where we'll definitely make sure that the rewards are appropriate for substance transformation I think it's not as black and white though as will you ever be able to get this item or that item it's more about when could you possibly get certain items from from Key Systems is it a situation where many players have had a chance to earn them kind of the traditional way and this is an opportunity for for some players to catch up or things like that so there's more Nuance to it than I think just yes or no uh but absolutely we'll make sure the rewards are kind of tuned appropriately for when it releases um and yeah I would say the system is is not going to release in its current state it we'll have to go through a little bit more kind of maturity before we release it in our version also one more thing substance transformation not being in our version trade residence not being in our version out launch for the foreseeable future very very good especially towards freetop playay players great change happy um uh server merges this is a part of thrown in Liberty for those of you for those of you who don't know uh it was always kind I think it was planned from the start from day one even in Korea that servers were to be merged hitting the top guilds in alliances from their respective servers against each other there's all there's also obviously cross server content and stuff when can we expect server transfers to happen in our game you know I would frame the response a little bit differently because I actually don't think think that time is the real factor for Server merges I think it's what's the population look like um what does the community look like in that server is there healthy competition between guilds or has a mega Alliance form that's kind of weeding out competition and those types of factors are significantly more critical than just time um so you know maybe this sounds a little bit like a Dodge but I really believe this it's not hey we've reached this point it's time to merge it's let's evaluate each server on a case-by casee basis let's see is the community healthy in that server are we getting the types of players that they want and if we are then we want to you know of course enable that merge um we're not afraid to do it we're we're open to doing it we're willing to do it but when the time is or when the moment is right because it's not about timing would it be possible for regional for Regions to be merged so like na West and NA East you know that's something that we've talked about a little but we've been really so focused on launch it you know it hasn't been a major Point are now so we're really focused on launch at this point can we ever expect the global version of third and Liberty to catch up to the Korean version yeah it's a dream uh for sure right you know it's one of our goals to catch up I would say it's it's more like reaching near parody um because there are always things that we need to do as the publisher before we can kind of release certain content uh localization QA if there's infrastructure changes needed so all of this has to be considered uh but it is our goal to kind of get to this near very near parody State what I will say though is that we are you know this is one of the great things about having a strong relationship with NC s is that we're working closely with them so that we can have certain pieces of content that do launch at parody um with the Korean Service uh the first of those will be the Halloween event that's coming up later this month so that will be the same event going on in Korea and um in the AGS version um there's some other stuff that I won't I won't spoil yet but there's some other stuff coming there's some other stuff coming soon uh maybe in the December update following up on that games like Black Desert online have actually caught up and sometimes they're like a week behind lost St lot closer but they're still months behind do you think it's possible that the global version of Throne will ever get to the point where it's maybe like a week behind that close or is that probably not possible I think it's just it's tough to answer right now um because we're not even live yet you know we need to see what types of challenges we have in a live setting when we're getting new builds getting new content and I think it also just it depends on what content is coming as well you see right now for example example we're not releasing substance transformation or other of these types of things that we think still need some tweaks and if we feel strongly about that in other cases we want to make sure that we're only giving content that's you know going to be uh really good for our players so it's just a really tough thing to say in black and white yes or no one of the most popular questions that I've been hearing that I really haven't heard a solid answer on is Lucent being account bound now in Korea it's bound to your character or excuse me your account so if I have it on this this character and I'm and I'm rolling on this server with a different character I still have the same amount of Lucent what's going to happen with Early Access and regular launch October 1st what's going to happen with the Lucent can I play on The Early Access Farm Lucent and then use that Lucent in the regular servers yeah so Lucent is a count pound uh so just to clear that up Lucent will be a compound and if you earn Lucen on one server you will be able to use it on a second server okay so here's probably my opinion the most important question for for everyone that's playing okay they just you guys don't know it yet this is really important in Throne Liberty all the events the major events they are scheduled so for example in Korea Siege is every other Sunday at 900 p. m. local time all of the guild vers Guild Wars take place 11:00 p.

m. Korean time Ark bosses take place at 10 p. m.

10 p. m. right I think 10 I think 10 p.

m. uh yes 10 p. m.

9 p. m. yeah 10 p.

m. 10 p. m.