Official Zenith AMA 3

Official Discord AMA which took place on 2022/05/31. Players were able to ask questions a day ahead of time and upvote/downvote questions they wanted to see answered.

## Q&A

### 1

**Question:** It's being said in a interview with Andy about that the models of Pets are pretty much done and only have to find a way to implement the pets system into the game but what's the current status of that?
**Answer:** That's a great question -- that's been on our radar and obviously a part of our roadmap for a long time. Our focus in the past quarter has been to address some of the most pressing issues the community faces -- like fixing critical bugs that were breaking invasions, and introducing a ton of end game content. While we don't think pets would be too hard to implement we need to balance that against everything else the community is saying is broken or needs work -- including content, balance, and progression.

It is something that's still really high on our roadmap, but I can't give you an exact date right now.(Q&A 1 )

### 2

**Question:** are staffs for mages planned to come back to the game at some point, and if so, in what way?
**Answer:** Good question! We had staffs back in alpha to test them out. While they were fun, we currently don't have plans to introduce them right now(Q&A 2 )

### 3

**Question:** During the Kickstarter there were a lot of stretch goals reached and a lot of things promised.
**Answer:** We've started planning a lot of this stuff out already, but due to the complexity of implementing things like UGC editors and Player Economy aspects like shops, we need to make sure we have the right balancing and systems in place before introducing. That means we'll spend a lot more time in the preproduction phase rather than immediately start implementing. I would say you can expect to see some of these features come into fruition late this year(Q&A 3 )

### 4

**Question:** Is higher customizability for in-game graphics and performance going to be implemented? Right now for PCVR it's very very lackluster.
**Answer:** Yes, there will be. In addition you should be able to see some fidelity improvements in the next update, in particular lighting should have been much improved(Q&A 4 )

### 5

**Question:** We're "agents of zenith". We're out helping the citizens of zenith. Are there plans to have these citizens do more than just sit around?
**Answer:** As Kickstarter campaign mentioned somewhere, we want to create a "living, breathing world".
So, even though humans are only a small fragment within the world of beasts, trees and grass, we want to make them more alive too.(Q&A 5 )

### 6

**Question:** Will we see the level cap increase with this next update?
**Answer:** There will not a level cap increase in the next update but that is something we do have planned further along in our development roadmap.(Q&A 6 )

### 7

**Question:** How goes the PSVR development? Sony doesn't seem to want to let us participate in PTR activities, even though we have to pay for Plus to even play. It's a great game, I just hope we aren't being forgotten.
**Answer:** PSVR Development is going really well -- we work closely with our partners at Sony and we will continue supporting PS VR for the foreseeable future(Q&A 7 )

### 8

**Question:** Will we see more RP buildings in the next updates ?
(Barber, Bank, Tavern, Arena, specific shops like; Tailors, Smith, Grocery)
**Answer:** We love this idea to have things like this to help bolster the RP community. This is something we do not currently have planned for an update in the near future but something we can consider later on.(Q&A 8 )

### 9

**Question:** Everyone’s all excited about the CN but will there be any new godstones/abilities for the existing classes in the next major update or the forseeable future?
**Answer:** There will be new godstones/abilities for the existing classes in the future but not something that is in included in this next major update.(Q&A 9 )

### 10

**Question:** When it says 4-8 players for the new dungeons does that imply there will be a minimum amount of players to clear it?
**Answer:** Yup at least 4 players would be needed for the new dungeons as they'll take some group coordination to clear. We’ll have instance matchmaking to help any solo players team up!(Q&A 10 )

### 11

**Question:** To Andy and Lauren, how has your role in the company changed since hiring more people? What did you spend most of your work hours on at the start of development, alphas and betas, launch, and currently, post launch? Furthermore, what period of time was your favorite in terms of working on the game?
**Answer:** That's a great question. When Lauren and I started the company -- our roles were obviously to just build and test as quickly as possible.

Now that we're closing in on 20 people (and are hiring for much more) our ability to directly work on the product has changed significantly. While I still miss coding and doing design work directly, that's just not possible with our team size anymore. We spend a lot more time thinking about how to hire the absolute best people in the industry while creating an environment that allows people to do the best work of their lives here.

In addition, I still hold the mantle of, essentially an Executive Producer or Design Director in that I'm still responsible for the overall quality level and design direction for the game. I try to play the game and provide pages of feedback several times a week, but I'm not in a position to action on that feedback anymore.

Lauren's focus has been on directing the engineering team and working to unblock them from critical tasks to keep the engineering team as well as setting the high level technical vision for the team(Q&A 11 )

### 12

**Question:** are all dungeons part of the castle or will they be located separately in the overworld and accessed similarly to the underside (a portal of some kind)
**Answer:** Overworld dungeons will be linked directly to the world itself, the idea is that you'd complete the overworld dungeon which can be thought of as the "easiest" variant of it. Some dungeons will have overworld flavors, while some will be instanced only. The end game raids will be instance only(Q&A 12 )

### 13

**Question:** Is Dingbo a specific Pandowl, or an entirely different type of (cute) woodland creature?
**Answer:** Dingbo is not part of the Pandowl family and is actually a different creature all together. Dripbo on the other hand is something different entirely lol(Q&A 13 )

### 14

**Question:** When you have/if you had time to play Zenith for fun, what's your favorite thing to do?
**Answer:** When I have time I love exploring, taking my time to see every part of the map by climbing + gliding + dashing. Also love climbing and picking fruit. I will stop and pick fruit any time as it’s so satisfying 🍊(Q&A 14 )

### 15

**Question:** will we be getting another peek behind the scenes at any point in the future? the dev streams were great.
**Answer:** Yes we do really want to start interacting and revealing more content with you all soon. it's just been so busy lately that we haven't had time to do that, but expect that to pick up in the coming weeks and months(Q&A 15 )

### 16

**Question:** Are there plans to set up inventory management between pages?
**Answer:** Yes -- there are plans to improve inventory management as a whole. We knew the lack of inventory space was a huge deal so we wanted to push out a quick update for that, but it's definitely understood that there is still a long way to go before we have the perfect system(Q&A 16 )

### 17

**Question:** Any timeline on when helmets will finally be available?
**Answer:** I guess this is as good a time as any to unveil that helmets will be introduced in the next major update :). Get ready to grind for a whole new piece of loot -- and man, some of these helmets look really cool, so I'm excited to have you guys try them on :). Helmets may appear in earlier game synthesis, but we're placing a special emphasis on making them part of the end game grind(Q&A 17 )

### 18

**Question:** is the castle a physical object we can explore from the overworld? where is it located?
**Answer:** Stay tuned 😉(Q&A 18 )

### 19

**Question:** Does the Celestial Throne update contain other gameplay features that have not been shown yet?
**Answer:** The Celestial Throne update \*does\* contain several new systems outside of dungeons and matchamking, but there aren't any new lifeskills in this update -- our focus was primarily on supporting end game content and adding more content to the core game loop from 0-40 with the introduction of new overworld dungeons and instances, but you'll notice a handful of new systems as a part of that(Q&A 19 )

### 20

**Question:** Are there any plans to "rework" or expand upon the main story quests in the future?
**Answer:** Short answer is yes. We hope to make a more cohesive storyline by updating the main story quests with more plot. Storytelling is a huge component for improving the first-time player experience, which is a top priority of ours. A couple ideas are more voice overs and possibly cutscene-like features in the future. All speculative, and no firm plans for when this will happen exactly.(Q&A 20 )

### 21

**Question:** how have you made sure dungeon puzzles cannot be cheesed? (ex. flying over walls, fast flying to gain a lot of altitude etc)
**Answer:** So one thing is that we've disabled the ability to gain a lot of altitude while flying fast -- while that was a fun feature for awhile that many people gamed, it was never intended to be a feature long term. The issue is that it makes it extremely hard to design around for the reasons you mentioned above -- that being said we are adding a new zipline/ways to access places that previously mandated scooper booping or fast flying so you'll still be able to do everything you did before. As for getting around climbing puzzles, we've added the concept of "slippery" surfaces and most of our dungeon walls will be slippery so you can't just climb everywhere. Slippery surfaces are still climbable but require more stamina to do so, and less distance per grab -- we don't think this reduces the immersion at all, in fact you would expect some surfaces to be harder to climb than others, and we do actually incorporate this feature to a lesser extent in other areas of the game currently(Q&A 21 )

### 22

**Question:** Any chance we could see basic mouth movement animations with in game VC?
**Answer:** We could see this happening in the future as it improves the immersive and social experience. No immediate plans at the moment though, as we would need to model out the inside of the characters' mouths first which would take some time(Q&A 22 )

### 23

**Question:** Like many others, I am curious to see whether endgame players will have a reason to farm dungeons, seeing as they have the best gear in the game currently.
**Answer:** There will be many new gear sets in the update and many paths of progression to access them -- end game players will definitely be able to grind for new armorsets that were more powerful than previous sets. In addition, we are planning on delinking item level from level requirements so that a piece of gear that requires you to be 40 to wear it could potentially be much more powerful than item level 40 in this new patch(Q&A 23 )

### 24

**Question:** Will the official Zenith website ever become the main source of information or will it always be discord? Do you guys plan on updating that website more often, other than the blog. A lot of the main site is missing recent information after the game pre released in January.
**Answer:** Given the small size of our team, we share updates primarily in Discord since it's easier than updating the website (and we get to interact with you!). We’ll continue doing our best to do blogposts and mailing list newsletters updates though!
(Q&A 24 )

## Closing Message

Alright guys -- thanks for taking the time to ask us some great questions -- unfortunately that's all the time we have today as we're grinding hard on getting this next major update out to y'all! Gotta take off now, but look out for some really cool reveals coming soon as well as special ways to access the new content early.

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