Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Fallen Earth - On Free2Play and Beyond!
We're on the cusp!
Today marks the day we've been building up to for the last four months. As
of today, everyone with an account will be able to log in and play
Fallen Earth without buying a box or paying for a sub! Free players will
be able to gain every level, craft every item, join and create clans, and visit
every place in the world (including all instances) without paying a
dime. Current subscribers will be upgraded for free to the Commander
Premium Subscription (until their current sub or game time ends or
re-ups), and everyone who has ever bought the game or had a sub will be
receiving their Spiked Chopper. Check this page out for the full rundown on playing free or supporting the game with a Premium Subscription.
We know the ride hasn't always been smooth, but it's been a crazy fun journey and we're honored to be taking it with you!
Gifts Recap
If
you're an existing subscriber, please check below to make sure you
receive everything for which you've qualified. We've spent a lot of time
on these, and we'd hate it if you missed out on them!
- July Subscriber Appreciation Gifts: Fancy White Boots and Skindog Pet. Sent to anyone with an active subscription or game time in July. Keys sent out in August.
- August Subscriber Appreciation Gifts: Snazzy White Hat and Chupacabras Pet. Goes to anyone with an active subscription or game time in August. Keys sent out in September.
- September Subscriber Appreciation Gifts: Sexy White Jacket and Classic Creeper Pet. Goes to anyone with an active subscription or game time in September. Keys sent out in October.
- Free2Play Transition Subscriber Appreciation Gift: Chest, Legs, and Groin Wardrobe Slots unlock item. Goes to all who had an active subscription in July, August, September, and October. Keys to be sent out today.
- Vet Reward Item: Spiked Chopper. Keys to be sent out by the end of this week.
- Commander Subscription Upgrade: Free upgrade to Commander level Premium Subscription on any game time/sub active when the game goes Free2Play. Lasts until the end of the current billing cycle.
- Permanent Commander Subscription Discount: Permanent discount on Commander Premium Subscription ($29.99 to $19.99), available to all players who have ever purchased or subscribed to the game. Effective permanently as of October 12th.
As
with all of the code-based gifts (Vet Reward Chopper and
Subscriber/Transition Gifts), you can check your e-mail for the code OR
find it in your account's "Codes" page.
Patch Notes & World Events Delay
Besides Free2Play, here are some changes of note:
- Loot on many creatures fixed (drop rates shouldn't have been as low as they were)
- Bridges fixed to lower incidents of people falling through them
- Bandages back on merchants
- Fastener count in recipes reduced (to reflect the fact that they are now rarer)
- Bandages require less cotton
- New items on Reward Merchants: "Commander's Best Crafting Kit" (can be used in place of any crafting kit) and Wardrobe Slot unlocks
We
wanted desperately to release World Events along with Free2Play, but
the realities of testing mean we've uncovered enough bugs and
performance issues to have to push it. As a consequence, World Events
will be added in next week. And they'll be awesome when they do.
Check out the full patch notes here.
Economy Overview:
Subtitle: Where are we going with all this??
We
understand that before the last patch it was easy to run out to a
waypoint and snag some components you knew would be there. Completely
understated, it sucks to not be able to just do this now! This is the
way Things Have Always Been, and changing it up is stressful to everyone
that has been doing it since forever. There were, however, three huge problems with maintaining that status quo: One, it wasn't fun. Two, when things are easy to get (as they were), they don't matter as much. Three, there was no reason to interact with other players. At
best, it was a simple way to get whatever components you needed with
little challenge; at worst it was an unengaging pre-requisite to
crafting that devalued both cooperation and final crafted products.
Everyone got the resources they wanted whenever they wanted them and
everyone could craft anything easily, meaning there was no real value to
resources and not much of a market for components or products. Nobody
needed to trade or cooperate to achieve goals, and there was never any
competition for resources. While this was a fairly laid back system to
participate in, it was not particularly good for Fallen Earth's long term health.
You'll have to make a lot more interesting choices, and there will be more game there to play. All in all it should be a lot of fun, and we're looking forward to it -- and all the other new developments that the transition to Free2Play will enable!
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Jedi Knight vs. Bounty Hunter
In “Choose Your Side,” members of the Star Wars™: The Old
Republic™ development team debate the merits of the various in-game
classes to see who will truly reign supreme. In the first installment in
this four-part series, the noble Jedi Knight squares off against the
nefarious Bounty Hunter. In support of the Jedi Knight is Senior Writer
Hall Hood and Designer Austin Peckenpaugh, while Senior System Designer
Pete Warner and Writer Randy Begel defend the Bounty Hunter.
Companion Characters Update - Part 2
In the previous blog,
Senior Game Designer William Wallace explained new improvements to
companion characters in The Old Republic. Here, he delves deeper into AI
and companions’ roles in a group.
Originally, our companions functioned almost entirely on their own, with only a few options for manual control. From both internal feedback and testing, we found that the integral nature of companions to gameplay in The Old Republic™ had many players wishing for more control over their companion’s behavior – they wanted more than what they had experienced in other massively-multiplayer games.
To address this, we’ve taken a page from other BioWare games and added AI toggles to each ability to control whether the companion should decide on their own when to use them, or whether they should be manually activated by the player. Players who are not interested in managing their companion can leave the default toggles on and let them run on autopilot. Skilled players can take complete control of the companion by expanding the companion bar onto their screen and using the abilities directly as though they were player abilities.
Many players will fall somewhere in between the two extremes, and will use the AI toggles occasionally to change the way their companion fights:
Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ features a large amount of group content, including Heroic Quests (challenging quests requiring 2 or 4 players to complete) and Flashpoints (highly engaging instanced story content for groups of 4 players). One benefit we’re seeing from our new, fully featured companions is additional flexibility about how players approach group content. A full group in The Old Republic always has four players. Any player leaving the group can be substituted by a companion of the group’s choice, with the party leader in control of which player gets to use their companion.
If a player leaves the group or its proximity, to travel to a vendor for instance, he is able to summon his companion for the journey. Upon reentering proximity of the group, the companion is automatically dismissed. The remaining group can temporarily substitute the missing player with one of their companions if desired.
A common situation familiar to MMO players is the departure of a member halfway through a quest or instance (As a personal example: I once abandoned a group in the middle of an instance when my washing machine caught fire. These things happen!). This could potentially ruin the game experience for all involved parties, but with the ability to substitute a companion in this situation, an experienced group of players will often be able to mitigate the impact of this event and continue their adventure.
While companions certainly don’t have the impressive AI to be able to mimic most human players, the option to micromanage a companion’s ability use on the companion bar in crucial battles will enable experienced groups to successfully complete their mission, even after losing a group member.
But don’t start dreaming about conquering the galaxy with an army of companions at your side just yet – Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively multiplayer game, and as such it is a social experience as much as it is a story-driven BioWare role-playing game. While the majority of content in the game can be mastered by a player and their companion, some group content is a different matter. Flashpoints often require human coordination to successfully overcome challenges.
Take, for example, the fight we showed at PAX East, in which a group of players fought Captain Shivanek and his pet, Ripper. As we showed in the walkthrough video, the group had to split in two to complete this fight. As the first of several boss battles inside the Taral V flashpoint, it provides a moderately difficult challenge for a group of four players – three players and a companion will find this fight to be a far more challenging obstacle that may take several attempts to overcome. Two players and two companions may find it impossible altogether.
As our testing continues and expands, the companion system will
continue to be polished and refined. We take our testing process very
seriously, and have significantly altered our original companion design
to respond to player behavior and feedback and to ensure that companion
characters are a unique and fun part of The Old Republic.
Any specific abilities mentioned above are subject to testing and redesign between now and launch. We know that we have big shoes to fill when it comes to companion characters, and will continue to make improvements so that we deliver companion characters that meet and exceed your expectations; companions that you will come to know very well for years to come on your journey through The Old Republic.
Companion AI
When it comes to the amount of control over their companion, players have different, often diametrically opposed preferences. Some players do not want to manage their companions any more than they have to, wanting instead for their companions to act autonomously without the need to manually trigger abilities or actions. Others want direct control over their companions, playing them almost as a second character.
Originally, our companions functioned almost entirely on their own, with only a few options for manual control. From both internal feedback and testing, we found that the integral nature of companions to gameplay in The Old Republic™ had many players wishing for more control over their companion’s behavior – they wanted more than what they had experienced in other massively-multiplayer games.
To address this, we’ve taken a page from other BioWare games and added AI toggles to each ability to control whether the companion should decide on their own when to use them, or whether they should be manually activated by the player. Players who are not interested in managing their companion can leave the default toggles on and let them run on autopilot. Skilled players can take complete control of the companion by expanding the companion bar onto their screen and using the abilities directly as though they were player abilities.
Many players will fall somewhere in between the two extremes, and will use the AI toggles occasionally to change the way their companion fights:
- Players may choose to disable some area-of-effect abilities when using crowd control or when fighting tough single enemies.
- Players may activate special modes or stances for their companion, causing them to focus more on damage or tanking, or on a single target versus groups of enemies.
- Players may want to manually activate buffs and powerful special abilities on long cooldowns, as opposed to letting the companion pick when to use their most powerful attacks.
Group Role
Finding certain roles for group content can sometimes be a difficult task in massively multiplayer games.
Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ features a large amount of group content, including Heroic Quests (challenging quests requiring 2 or 4 players to complete) and Flashpoints (highly engaging instanced story content for groups of 4 players). One benefit we’re seeing from our new, fully featured companions is additional flexibility about how players approach group content. A full group in The Old Republic always has four players. Any player leaving the group can be substituted by a companion of the group’s choice, with the party leader in control of which player gets to use their companion.
If a player leaves the group or its proximity, to travel to a vendor for instance, he is able to summon his companion for the journey. Upon reentering proximity of the group, the companion is automatically dismissed. The remaining group can temporarily substitute the missing player with one of their companions if desired.
A common situation familiar to MMO players is the departure of a member halfway through a quest or instance (As a personal example: I once abandoned a group in the middle of an instance when my washing machine caught fire. These things happen!). This could potentially ruin the game experience for all involved parties, but with the ability to substitute a companion in this situation, an experienced group of players will often be able to mitigate the impact of this event and continue their adventure.
While companions certainly don’t have the impressive AI to be able to mimic most human players, the option to micromanage a companion’s ability use on the companion bar in crucial battles will enable experienced groups to successfully complete their mission, even after losing a group member.
But don’t start dreaming about conquering the galaxy with an army of companions at your side just yet – Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively multiplayer game, and as such it is a social experience as much as it is a story-driven BioWare role-playing game. While the majority of content in the game can be mastered by a player and their companion, some group content is a different matter. Flashpoints often require human coordination to successfully overcome challenges.
Take, for example, the fight we showed at PAX East, in which a group of players fought Captain Shivanek and his pet, Ripper. As we showed in the walkthrough video, the group had to split in two to complete this fight. As the first of several boss battles inside the Taral V flashpoint, it provides a moderately difficult challenge for a group of four players – three players and a companion will find this fight to be a far more challenging obstacle that may take several attempts to overcome. Two players and two companions may find it impossible altogether.
Any specific abilities mentioned above are subject to testing and redesign between now and launch. We know that we have big shoes to fill when it comes to companion characters, and will continue to make improvements so that we deliver companion characters that meet and exceed your expectations; companions that you will come to know very well for years to come on your journey through The Old Republic.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
STO - Klingons Unleashed
Tomorrow (October 6), Klingon Defense Force play will be unlocked on
Tribble for all accounts that have a Federation character at level 3 and
higher.
New Klingon Defense Force officers will begin their career at Lt.
Commander 7 (level 17). After they complete their initial training
missions, they will generally be at Lt. Commander 9 (level 19). This is
a big change from the current live game on Holodeck, where KDF officers
begin their career at Lieutenant 6 (level 6).
We changed the starting level based on feedback from the community
that KDF play did not include enough PvE content, and because leveling
up a KDF officer was not as rewarding as doing the same with a
Federation officer. By shifting the starting level upward, we are able
to provide a more complete flow of content to players and tighten up the
overall experience.
As with Federation play, the story episodes are now threaded into a
sequence that makes it clear where you should be headed next. This
addresses problems with players having to search for story content and
gives the KDF player a clear and well-defined story to play through as
they make their way to max level.
We're happy with the new KDF play and are looking forward to your
feedback. We’d like to remind you, however, that this is only a
temporary incarnation of the more full-fledged Klingon Faction that is
in development for a future update. So, come on over to Tribble tomorrow
and give it a try!
As a bonus, within the three weeks following when the F2P build is
live, we will be giving out awards to your character on Holodeck based
on what you accomplished on Tribble. If you get a Klingon Defense Force
character from start (at level 17) to level 31, we'll give you a
reasonably large chunk of dilithium (exactly how much depends a bit on
how the economy tunes up in testing, but this will be a meaningful
award.) If you get a character to level 51, we'll give you a bonus ship
slot and a unique title that is different from the Federation's award
title. This award applies only to KDF characters that start fresh on
Tribble. It does not apply to characters that transfer onto Tribble
from Holodeck once we activate character transfer. These awards are in
addition to any awards granted for leveling a Federation character.
Friday, September 30, 2011
BioWare open to the possibility of a Mass Effect MMO
BioWare’s Casey Hudson says the Mass Effect team is yet to figure out
a workable multiplayer premise for the franchise, but sees the
attraction of an MMO.
“We’ve been trying to think of a way that makes sense for people to
experience Mass Effect with their friends,” the series executive
producer told Game Informer as part of the latest issue’s coverage.
“We haven’t yet come up with a way to do that, so we don’t have
anything to announce at this time. But, obviously, multiplayer is
something we want to do more of in the future as a company.”
Asked about the possibility of an MMO, Hudson admitted he feels the franchise is a good match.
“A lot of people say that they want to see an MMO, I think that kind of makes sense for this universe,” he said.
“Part of what you’re trying to do is save the universe so you can
live in it. That’s part of the promise, I think, for any great IP. It
has to be a world worth saving…
“I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the
Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel
or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense.”
Mass Effect 3 is due on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 before the end of the year.
Eurogamer Expo 2011: Meet and Greet Q&A Highlights
Question: I got my ass kicked in hutt-ball, how are you going to stop that happening?
Daniel Erickson: We have the fire traps and the acid trap, we actually have a lot better abilities for the classes. One of the problems that's going on right now is that you guys are playing at level 14, and because we wanted to make it a demo that everyone can sit down and play, we've actually taken some of the powers off the bars as well. Like we kept you with sort of your core stuff. One of the things people kept asking is "Hey, it seems really slow when I'm running?" Sprint comes at level 15. So it's right after that. By the time you're actually up a bit, people come in at different levels and have different main abilities they're going to use for it. By the time that everybody's up running around 30, you've all got enough control abilities to balance it out. At the very beginning, that's why there's the fire stuff and the acid pit. As you guys get better at the game, you'll learn that different classes emphasize different pieces. So people tend to learn very early, if you're playing the Bounty hunter right now, he doesn't have his lasso I don't think. When he gets it, you very quickly learn to stand on one side of the acid pit, and see if anyone comes close on the other side of the acid pit. Other people are very fire central, other people are very drop pieces, some people make better escorts. Actually Gabe's team has gone through really well and defined roles for each of the classes powers and how you're supposed to play, let's be clear, a team based game.
Stephen Reid: And no one is really using guard right now, and the cover classes aren't being used to their maximum potential. There's a lot of tactics there that we haven't been seeing at this stage. There is a lot more to it than what you're seeing.
DE: What you're not going to see, is places that are not team-based things. Like when you're on Alderaan, when you're on the Void Star, which are actually more objective based, or when you're out in the open PvP wastes, you're not just going to see acid everywhere.
DE: The question was "How are we going to stop specific classes getting cornered into specific roles," and actually what we've seen is that's not really a problem because things are so flexible. Nobody cares what your class is actually. People do not advertise for an "Inquisitor Shadow." People say "I need a tank." So what we actually see a lot is - and we're actually - we can't talk about all of this. We're doing more things to make your role more visible to other players, because that's actually what people are looking for. They don't care if you're an Inquisitor tank, or a Juggernaut tank, or you're playing a Bounty Hunter tank. They care about getting a tank, so because you've got the different pieces, you've actually got a lot more flexibility to play the story you want, and then pick the type of player you want to be.
Question about guilds.
DE: Guild functionality, obviously creating guilds, correcting guilds, all that stuff, the stuff that's basically in the phase 2, not for the online stuff, which Stephen can talk about, but with the end game stuff, the stuff that did not make the cut for launch, is basically rankings, guild banks, all of that stuff. It is the stuff that's sitting at the highest priority post launch. So expect to see it in like, basically, the quickest we can get that in the update. Communities is massively important, and it's massively important, to be completely frank, for people making subscription decisions, right? Like, this is number one is all of the things that are going to allow people to keep their friends in, get their friends interested, get all your guild stuff together, and yeah, all of that is our top stuff.
Question about species.
DE: There are, uh, oh, the species questions...there are not any races to be announced, that would be super funny. We have people from the Caucus Mountains. There are no more species that are going to be announced before the release, and we will not see, we talked about this before, we're not going to see any of the super crazy ones like, oh, the (?), I want to be an Ithorian, and relate to people in squeaky two-mouth talk, uh, and have nobody ever notice that I'm an Ithorian. There's a reason, and I know people don't like the response that comes, but it is the design decision that was made. We're not a sandbox game. We are telling a Star Wars cinematic story, and there has not been a freak race lead character of any major Star Wars product in history. Not one comic book series, not one book series, and there's a reason, you cannot--I'm not going to say you, there's always the guy like "I can! I know Trandoshan's in my heart!"--but, people cannot relate and understand those species. Star Wars as a fictional piece is the journey of us, being a human perspective, going out into the unknown and meeting crazy, freaky things. So we're going to get all kinds of awesome, freaky aliens to fight, to talk to, to hang out with, to have as companion characters, but if, remember we said is if we ever do actual, like, "I'm going to be a wookiee, I'm going to be a droid, I'm going to be an Ithorian," it will be a class, so we can do the story right. You'll learn what it is like to be that thing. We don't want to just come out and say, "Hey, we just slapped--," we don't want you to be a human in an Ithorian suit.
SR: Unless that's some weird plot line.
DE: That may be an Agent plot line.
SR: Another question please.
Question about Facebook/Twitter integration.
SR: That's been looked at. It's not going to happen for launch. I'm sorry, the question was, if anyone didn't hear it, "Are we going to link it to things like Facebook, Twitter, and that sort of thing." It's really being looked at very, very closely, as are things like mobile apps, and that sort of thing. Anything that connects outside of the game to inside of the game. But it's probably not going to be a launch feature.
DE: If you tweet to Stephen about what you're doing in game, he will retweet it out for you. So, uh..
SR: It's a manual retweet service. Now, I would actually say, me personally, I will fight with all of my heart to avoid us doing automatic tweeting based on achievements in the game.
DE: Or the...how to make everybody stop following you on Twitter.
SR: Yep. I did exactly that when everybody started playing a game that shipped last year.
Q: What about surnames?
SR: There's a very good reason we haven't discussed surnames yet, and that will be revealed before ship.
DE: Or not. Those are the only two possibilities.
SR: It's one or the other. I think it'll be revealed before ship. I'm hopeful.
Q: Will there be achievements in the game?
SR: There will not be achievements in game at ship, correct?
DE: Not correct.
SR: Not correct?!?
DE: Not correct. Achievements have made ship in fact. They're not going to be the achievements, the crazy achievements that you have to place everywhere, that are like, "Hey if you drink 6 beers and fart in a cantina," those are not going the achievements to go in. Version 1 of the achievement system which go in, which is actually doing big, heroic stuff, because there's a ton of great optional content in The Old Republic, like, "Hey, I went to every world and kicked the world boss's ass." Those kinds of achievements. That's going to be the level one system. People need reasons to go back to planets and run around and do that other stuff, so that will come second. The first system is, "Hey, here's my bragging rights, here's the bad ass stuff I did in-game."
SR: And you thought you weren't going to get any other good news today. Awesome. I didn't even know that was happening.
Q: Is there a Stephen Reid achievement?
SR: What would that be? Get banned by me on the forums. Achievement unlocked.
Q: Question about PvP game types
SR: We have three warzones at ship. Huttball and Alderaan you've seen, Void Star is the other one. Void Star we announced in this room.
DE: A long time ago. This is one of the big ones that testing came through. So we announced the Void Star and people have actually asked me, "What happened to the Void Star?" We announced the Void Star, which was our assault map, so you go back and forth doing a boarding action game. It actually had a lot of problems in its first incarnation. It was fun, but people didn't understand the basics of it. Gabe's team pulled it. They said they didn't even want testing on it. This is bad. They've completely redone the entire game and it's come back out, so Void Star is actually looking fantastic. We'll have a new one to get in front of people.
SR: I'm pretty confident you'll see Void Star relatively soon. Open world pvp is available of course, with objectives that is, and just find a guy, and hit him in the head. That kind of pvp as well.
Q: Do you have something to share for people here in the EU that they can hear first?
SR: How about a release date? That was pretty good, right? We're opening a customer service center in Ireland. You can apply at bioware.com/careers. And actually we have someone who is a new BioWare employee as of like next month. Something European. I'm going to tell you the whole sordid tale of the European testing thing, and Chris will cry with me as we relay this story. So everybody here probably knows this, right? We were like, "European testing is coming really soon. We're about to open up European game testing where you invite a whole big wave of people." Remember this? It was like two days away. It was two days away. And that was the week of the first game testing weekend. And we were not going to invite a lot of people but we were going to invite a significant number. And then the invite system broke. Which was really embarrassing because it's the first time it broke in a year and a half of game testing. So when that happened all we were doing was scrambling to fix the invite system so we could invite the number of people we needed for the testing weekend. And at that point there was just no way we could invite anyone from Europe. And then immediately following that we realized that yes this new build was coming down. And we decided that we weren't going to go with it because it was a huge download and we were concerned we wouldn't get that many people in. Now I understand that people, particularly those who live in Scandinavian countries, who have light speed internet who can apparently download 27 gigs in five minutes. Most people are not capable of downloading that fast. So we made that decision. I apologize. We shouldn't have gone out and promised that. And that's the reason why I am reticent about talking about when European testing is going to start. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. And then when I say, "It's coming as soon as possible," that means the first opportunity I have to put people in I will be putting Europeans into testing. In fact, as you can tell, we took five hundred odd names today. So we're taking them in as fast as we can. Will we invite people in this room? If you weren't given a little ticket today from me, if you weren't at the keynote session, assuming you stay around, because you're going to have to stay around so we can get your name and everything else, we'll put everybody who's here tonight in testing.
DE: Stephen Reid, ladies and gentlemen, knows how to work a crowd.
SR: And it will really suck for the people who have already left. I'm serious, yeah, we'll do that. It may take a couple of weeks. There you go, that's a European question, Dover. Thanks for that.
Q: When are we going to find out which crafting skill goes with which gathering skill?
DE: A lot of them are really obvious. Like biochem and bioengineering. Its something we could pretty easily address. Make them tell you on the boards, its not really a big secret.
Q: Are you working on systems for replaying of the same class?
DE: You can already replay the same class and make different decisions. Every class has as much twists and turns and as much stuff in it as any BioWare game that came before it.
Q: Character limit per server?
DE: Eight, there will also be a full character cap, but I'm not sure what it is.
Q: Are servers faction locked?
DE: Not right now.
Q: Is there a solo world.
DE: There is a world to do end-game solo quests, but there is not a solo instanced planet at the moment.
Q: Are individual spaceships customizable?
SR: It is a potential future feature.
DE: Ships are customizable in all of the accessories and all that stuff. You can get new shields, new weapons, all that stuff. Cosmetics customization is not in for launch. No interior customization in launch. No guild ships at launch. We'll have to see in the future. The interesting thing about guild capital ships is it actually argues against its own reasoning. Which is, "Hey, we're guilds and we love social space. Give us some social space." Let's put all the guilds in their own ships, and now there's nobody on the planets. Until we sort of figure out a way around that and have a whole lot more time.
SR: Well the other thing about a feature like that is it doesn't take more than a five minute conversation to start coming up with all these other cool things you want do to. Like, "I want to dock my capital ship and do a boarding action against another guild!" This is not related to TOR, but I worked on a game called City of Villains. And the plan in the City of Villains expansion pack was that you would be able to make your own base and then you were going to be able to raid another person's base. That was on the back of the box. It was never in the game. Even today as far as I am aware. So that's the kind of stuff that we don't want to start promising or even suggesting. Because if we can never put it together then it's kind of sad.
DE: We still like the idea. When we look up we do not see any guild capital ships on the horizon.
SR: Starships are your personal housing.
Q: Will we have 3-D, free-form, space combat?
DE: Usually that one is the always same for me. If that is the thing that is what people want most after launch... I can't imagine we'd line up and say no. Once we're live, it's the fans. And not just the loudest fans, we have metrics, we can tell what you're doing.
Q: Now that released date is announced, how does the team feel about it?
SR: I don't know, it doesn't feel real.
DE: I was really, really excited to be here for it... It's going to be nicer to watch it go green.
SR: Its nice to not have to answer the same question a billion different ways every single day.
Q: Can you have a Twi'lek dancer in your starship?
DE: No, but if you have the CE, you can have a holo of a Twi'lek dancer in your starship.
Q: Faction change?
DE: NO.
Q: Custom pvp matches?
SR: Not at ship. I know we want to allow more features for more competitive PvP, but that's post-launch.
DE: The question was about European servers.
SR: I'm going to tell you where the European servers are, but you're not allowed to freak out. The European servers are going to be located in Ireland, in Dublin.
DE: Don't tell them the address, they'll go now. Mission impossible.
SR: And here's the reason you're not allowed to freak out. Ireland, as a country, is upgrading its internet infrastructure for our game. Which is a big damn deal, right? I had a conversation with the guy who's doing the server build a few months ago. They were talking about the fact that if you look at the gap in time between when we were guessing to launch and then when we were starting to do our servers, because you're obviously locking down the server hardware and what you need to buy and everything else. The time between that point and launch is so small that we are ramping up and buying hardware faster than any tech project ever. Faster than Google. Faster than Facebook. And this is what we're hearing from the server guys who are working on it, they're like, "This is unprecedented scaling you're talking about." So when you combine that and you go to the Irish government or whoever it is who runs internet in Ireland, and you say, "Hey, look at the bandwidth requirements of our game." And they're like, "Uhm, we might need to get something bigger than a T1 line." So they are literally upgrading the internet infrastructure of the country itself. Which I think is damn cool. And then the US servers are going to be on east coast and west coast. So it doesn't really matter where. Any major metropolitan city in that case is going to be fine.
Daniel Erickson: We have the fire traps and the acid trap, we actually have a lot better abilities for the classes. One of the problems that's going on right now is that you guys are playing at level 14, and because we wanted to make it a demo that everyone can sit down and play, we've actually taken some of the powers off the bars as well. Like we kept you with sort of your core stuff. One of the things people kept asking is "Hey, it seems really slow when I'm running?" Sprint comes at level 15. So it's right after that. By the time you're actually up a bit, people come in at different levels and have different main abilities they're going to use for it. By the time that everybody's up running around 30, you've all got enough control abilities to balance it out. At the very beginning, that's why there's the fire stuff and the acid pit. As you guys get better at the game, you'll learn that different classes emphasize different pieces. So people tend to learn very early, if you're playing the Bounty hunter right now, he doesn't have his lasso I don't think. When he gets it, you very quickly learn to stand on one side of the acid pit, and see if anyone comes close on the other side of the acid pit. Other people are very fire central, other people are very drop pieces, some people make better escorts. Actually Gabe's team has gone through really well and defined roles for each of the classes powers and how you're supposed to play, let's be clear, a team based game.
Stephen Reid: And no one is really using guard right now, and the cover classes aren't being used to their maximum potential. There's a lot of tactics there that we haven't been seeing at this stage. There is a lot more to it than what you're seeing.
DE: What you're not going to see, is places that are not team-based things. Like when you're on Alderaan, when you're on the Void Star, which are actually more objective based, or when you're out in the open PvP wastes, you're not just going to see acid everywhere.
DE: The question was "How are we going to stop specific classes getting cornered into specific roles," and actually what we've seen is that's not really a problem because things are so flexible. Nobody cares what your class is actually. People do not advertise for an "Inquisitor Shadow." People say "I need a tank." So what we actually see a lot is - and we're actually - we can't talk about all of this. We're doing more things to make your role more visible to other players, because that's actually what people are looking for. They don't care if you're an Inquisitor tank, or a Juggernaut tank, or you're playing a Bounty Hunter tank. They care about getting a tank, so because you've got the different pieces, you've actually got a lot more flexibility to play the story you want, and then pick the type of player you want to be.
Question about guilds.
DE: Guild functionality, obviously creating guilds, correcting guilds, all that stuff, the stuff that's basically in the phase 2, not for the online stuff, which Stephen can talk about, but with the end game stuff, the stuff that did not make the cut for launch, is basically rankings, guild banks, all of that stuff. It is the stuff that's sitting at the highest priority post launch. So expect to see it in like, basically, the quickest we can get that in the update. Communities is massively important, and it's massively important, to be completely frank, for people making subscription decisions, right? Like, this is number one is all of the things that are going to allow people to keep their friends in, get their friends interested, get all your guild stuff together, and yeah, all of that is our top stuff.
Question about species.
DE: There are, uh, oh, the species questions...there are not any races to be announced, that would be super funny. We have people from the Caucus Mountains. There are no more species that are going to be announced before the release, and we will not see, we talked about this before, we're not going to see any of the super crazy ones like, oh, the (?), I want to be an Ithorian, and relate to people in squeaky two-mouth talk, uh, and have nobody ever notice that I'm an Ithorian. There's a reason, and I know people don't like the response that comes, but it is the design decision that was made. We're not a sandbox game. We are telling a Star Wars cinematic story, and there has not been a freak race lead character of any major Star Wars product in history. Not one comic book series, not one book series, and there's a reason, you cannot--I'm not going to say you, there's always the guy like "I can! I know Trandoshan's in my heart!"--but, people cannot relate and understand those species. Star Wars as a fictional piece is the journey of us, being a human perspective, going out into the unknown and meeting crazy, freaky things. So we're going to get all kinds of awesome, freaky aliens to fight, to talk to, to hang out with, to have as companion characters, but if, remember we said is if we ever do actual, like, "I'm going to be a wookiee, I'm going to be a droid, I'm going to be an Ithorian," it will be a class, so we can do the story right. You'll learn what it is like to be that thing. We don't want to just come out and say, "Hey, we just slapped--," we don't want you to be a human in an Ithorian suit.
SR: Unless that's some weird plot line.
DE: That may be an Agent plot line.
SR: Another question please.
Question about Facebook/Twitter integration.
SR: That's been looked at. It's not going to happen for launch. I'm sorry, the question was, if anyone didn't hear it, "Are we going to link it to things like Facebook, Twitter, and that sort of thing." It's really being looked at very, very closely, as are things like mobile apps, and that sort of thing. Anything that connects outside of the game to inside of the game. But it's probably not going to be a launch feature.
DE: If you tweet to Stephen about what you're doing in game, he will retweet it out for you. So, uh..
SR: It's a manual retweet service. Now, I would actually say, me personally, I will fight with all of my heart to avoid us doing automatic tweeting based on achievements in the game.
DE: Or the...how to make everybody stop following you on Twitter.
SR: Yep. I did exactly that when everybody started playing a game that shipped last year.
Q: What about surnames?
SR: There's a very good reason we haven't discussed surnames yet, and that will be revealed before ship.
DE: Or not. Those are the only two possibilities.
SR: It's one or the other. I think it'll be revealed before ship. I'm hopeful.
Q: Will there be achievements in the game?
SR: There will not be achievements in game at ship, correct?
DE: Not correct.
SR: Not correct?!?
DE: Not correct. Achievements have made ship in fact. They're not going to be the achievements, the crazy achievements that you have to place everywhere, that are like, "Hey if you drink 6 beers and fart in a cantina," those are not going the achievements to go in. Version 1 of the achievement system which go in, which is actually doing big, heroic stuff, because there's a ton of great optional content in The Old Republic, like, "Hey, I went to every world and kicked the world boss's ass." Those kinds of achievements. That's going to be the level one system. People need reasons to go back to planets and run around and do that other stuff, so that will come second. The first system is, "Hey, here's my bragging rights, here's the bad ass stuff I did in-game."
SR: And you thought you weren't going to get any other good news today. Awesome. I didn't even know that was happening.
Q: Is there a Stephen Reid achievement?
SR: What would that be? Get banned by me on the forums. Achievement unlocked.
Q: Question about PvP game types
SR: We have three warzones at ship. Huttball and Alderaan you've seen, Void Star is the other one. Void Star we announced in this room.
DE: A long time ago. This is one of the big ones that testing came through. So we announced the Void Star and people have actually asked me, "What happened to the Void Star?" We announced the Void Star, which was our assault map, so you go back and forth doing a boarding action game. It actually had a lot of problems in its first incarnation. It was fun, but people didn't understand the basics of it. Gabe's team pulled it. They said they didn't even want testing on it. This is bad. They've completely redone the entire game and it's come back out, so Void Star is actually looking fantastic. We'll have a new one to get in front of people.
SR: I'm pretty confident you'll see Void Star relatively soon. Open world pvp is available of course, with objectives that is, and just find a guy, and hit him in the head. That kind of pvp as well.
Q: Do you have something to share for people here in the EU that they can hear first?
SR: How about a release date? That was pretty good, right? We're opening a customer service center in Ireland. You can apply at bioware.com/careers. And actually we have someone who is a new BioWare employee as of like next month. Something European. I'm going to tell you the whole sordid tale of the European testing thing, and Chris will cry with me as we relay this story. So everybody here probably knows this, right? We were like, "European testing is coming really soon. We're about to open up European game testing where you invite a whole big wave of people." Remember this? It was like two days away. It was two days away. And that was the week of the first game testing weekend. And we were not going to invite a lot of people but we were going to invite a significant number. And then the invite system broke. Which was really embarrassing because it's the first time it broke in a year and a half of game testing. So when that happened all we were doing was scrambling to fix the invite system so we could invite the number of people we needed for the testing weekend. And at that point there was just no way we could invite anyone from Europe. And then immediately following that we realized that yes this new build was coming down. And we decided that we weren't going to go with it because it was a huge download and we were concerned we wouldn't get that many people in. Now I understand that people, particularly those who live in Scandinavian countries, who have light speed internet who can apparently download 27 gigs in five minutes. Most people are not capable of downloading that fast. So we made that decision. I apologize. We shouldn't have gone out and promised that. And that's the reason why I am reticent about talking about when European testing is going to start. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. And then when I say, "It's coming as soon as possible," that means the first opportunity I have to put people in I will be putting Europeans into testing. In fact, as you can tell, we took five hundred odd names today. So we're taking them in as fast as we can. Will we invite people in this room? If you weren't given a little ticket today from me, if you weren't at the keynote session, assuming you stay around, because you're going to have to stay around so we can get your name and everything else, we'll put everybody who's here tonight in testing.
DE: Stephen Reid, ladies and gentlemen, knows how to work a crowd.
SR: And it will really suck for the people who have already left. I'm serious, yeah, we'll do that. It may take a couple of weeks. There you go, that's a European question, Dover. Thanks for that.
Q: When are we going to find out which crafting skill goes with which gathering skill?
DE: A lot of them are really obvious. Like biochem and bioengineering. Its something we could pretty easily address. Make them tell you on the boards, its not really a big secret.
Q: Are you working on systems for replaying of the same class?
DE: You can already replay the same class and make different decisions. Every class has as much twists and turns and as much stuff in it as any BioWare game that came before it.
Q: Character limit per server?
DE: Eight, there will also be a full character cap, but I'm not sure what it is.
Q: Are servers faction locked?
DE: Not right now.
Q: Is there a solo world.
DE: There is a world to do end-game solo quests, but there is not a solo instanced planet at the moment.
Q: Are individual spaceships customizable?
SR: It is a potential future feature.
DE: Ships are customizable in all of the accessories and all that stuff. You can get new shields, new weapons, all that stuff. Cosmetics customization is not in for launch. No interior customization in launch. No guild ships at launch. We'll have to see in the future. The interesting thing about guild capital ships is it actually argues against its own reasoning. Which is, "Hey, we're guilds and we love social space. Give us some social space." Let's put all the guilds in their own ships, and now there's nobody on the planets. Until we sort of figure out a way around that and have a whole lot more time.
SR: Well the other thing about a feature like that is it doesn't take more than a five minute conversation to start coming up with all these other cool things you want do to. Like, "I want to dock my capital ship and do a boarding action against another guild!" This is not related to TOR, but I worked on a game called City of Villains. And the plan in the City of Villains expansion pack was that you would be able to make your own base and then you were going to be able to raid another person's base. That was on the back of the box. It was never in the game. Even today as far as I am aware. So that's the kind of stuff that we don't want to start promising or even suggesting. Because if we can never put it together then it's kind of sad.
DE: We still like the idea. When we look up we do not see any guild capital ships on the horizon.
SR: Starships are your personal housing.
Q: Will we have 3-D, free-form, space combat?
DE: Usually that one is the always same for me. If that is the thing that is what people want most after launch... I can't imagine we'd line up and say no. Once we're live, it's the fans. And not just the loudest fans, we have metrics, we can tell what you're doing.
Q: Now that released date is announced, how does the team feel about it?
SR: I don't know, it doesn't feel real.
DE: I was really, really excited to be here for it... It's going to be nicer to watch it go green.
SR: Its nice to not have to answer the same question a billion different ways every single day.
Q: Can you have a Twi'lek dancer in your starship?
DE: No, but if you have the CE, you can have a holo of a Twi'lek dancer in your starship.
Q: Faction change?
DE: NO.
Q: Custom pvp matches?
SR: Not at ship. I know we want to allow more features for more competitive PvP, but that's post-launch.
DE: The question was about European servers.
SR: I'm going to tell you where the European servers are, but you're not allowed to freak out. The European servers are going to be located in Ireland, in Dublin.
DE: Don't tell them the address, they'll go now. Mission impossible.
SR: And here's the reason you're not allowed to freak out. Ireland, as a country, is upgrading its internet infrastructure for our game. Which is a big damn deal, right? I had a conversation with the guy who's doing the server build a few months ago. They were talking about the fact that if you look at the gap in time between when we were guessing to launch and then when we were starting to do our servers, because you're obviously locking down the server hardware and what you need to buy and everything else. The time between that point and launch is so small that we are ramping up and buying hardware faster than any tech project ever. Faster than Google. Faster than Facebook. And this is what we're hearing from the server guys who are working on it, they're like, "This is unprecedented scaling you're talking about." So when you combine that and you go to the Irish government or whoever it is who runs internet in Ireland, and you say, "Hey, look at the bandwidth requirements of our game." And they're like, "Uhm, we might need to get something bigger than a T1 line." So they are literally upgrading the internet infrastructure of the country itself. Which I think is damn cool. And then the US servers are going to be on east coast and west coast. So it doesn't really matter where. Any major metropolitan city in that case is going to be fine.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Ragnar Tørnquist Discusses TSW's Skill System, Investigations, and more
The Secret World is set in a contemporary realm where every myth, every legend, every so-batshitmental- you-accusemice- of-spying-on-you conspiracy theory is true. It’s moody, it’s dangerous, it’s dark. Any elves that might live there will have sharp little teeth and drag your firstborn off to the woods if you turn your back. It doesn’t look like other MMOs.
So my first question to Ragnar Tørnquist, the game’s creative director: is it like other MMOs? Playing as a member of the corporate Illuminati, the secretive Templars, or the eastern Dragon, will I be killing ten vampires and taking their vampire skins back to a man who wants to make a big pale sack?
“No. It’s 11 vampires. That’s our formula: it’s plus one.” A short pause, then he chuckles. “We’re an MMO, and we’re not ashamed of that. There’s a lot for players to do: both in terms of traditional MMO mechanics, and in terms of new and exciting stuff that hasn’t really been done before.”
Most obvious is the lack of both levels and classes in the game. Instead, players earn points that can be plugged into skills – closer to EVE’s time-dependent research tree than WoW’s uphill crawl. Points are earned by “killing monsters, doing missions, gathering lore, crafting, PvP, just generally playing the game.” The cost of each skill varies depending on its position on a skill wheel – the total mastery of blood magic obviously costs more than the ability to fire a standard pistol.
Funcom want players to have freedom over their character creation. I ask Ragnar who he usually plays as during his sessions with the game. He starts off reticent.
Without set classes, players instead choose a ‘deck’ of skills – seven active and seven passive – that can be switched out depending on the job at hand. “It’s really easy to switch decks. We also have something called a Base Gear Manager, which basically allows you to create this prefab deck, a combination of weapons and equipment so you can switch really quickly.” Funcom’s playtests have shown that some people – Ragnar terms them ‘power-players’ – switch decks at every logical opportunity to get the kind of deliciously nerdy stat boost that makes us all sigh contentedly, whereas others are content to stick with their favourite skillset. Funcom are keen to make sure both approaches work – though points sunk into a skill-line you later come to shun can’t be won back.
But this classless, level-less MMO won’t be ditching all the genre’s trappings. Ragnar still expects the RPG holy trinity – healer, tank, damage-dealer – to work in combat scenarios. “Some players will definitely fall into the pre-prescribed roles. You can play the game like that, but we’re also creating very specific encounters where players have to think a little bit outside the box: where they’re going to have to bring two weapons on their character, they’re going to have to blend play styles a little bit.”
The game caters for groups of up to five, but doesn’t rely as heavily on instances as its peers. “Most of our world is completely open, and live and massively multiplayer. There’s a mission called Elm Street Blues – an assault on a police station. The siren goes off, and you basically get tasked with holding off this attack. The beauty of it is that when the siren goes off, everybody in that location hears it. People can just flock to you, and you’ll all get credit for that.”
More standard quests fill out your journal – each player having a story, main, and secondary job at one given point. The Secret World’s quests are known as ‘missions’ to better fit the game’s contemporary aesthetic, and Ragnar sees them as different animals to their MMO peers’ questy counterparts. “In a lot of MMOs, quests are there in order to feed the level treadmill. The Secret World’s missions are about rewards, XP and progression – but they’re also about the storytelling and the characters. Our missions are longer and more involved than the quests in most other games.”
Missions are split by type. Action missions are closest to standard quest models, but involve tasks such as “infiltrating a building, or setting off a bomb”. Sabotage missions will have you using “secret agent-type game mechanics” that I hope involve gluing some kind of fake moustache to your face and speaking in a bad French accent. Even more intriguing are The Secret World’s ‘investigation’ missions – described as “the most interesting” in Ragnar’s opinion.
“They’re the most different from everything else out there,” he says. “Investigation missions are about solving puzzles and digging deeper into the mysteries of the world.” Wait a second, puzzles? In my MMO? Kill ten puzzles? Pick up a puzzle and take it to the village elder? I’m confused. Ragnar helpfully clarifies. “We’re not trying to create arbitrary puzzles in a world: presenting you with sliding blocks or something.”
That conjures up images of halting your raids to Alt+Tab over to Wikipedia, before ducking back into the game. Won’t that make play sessions stilted? Ragnar says otherwise. “Some players, they’ll immediately want to go out of the game and start investigating. Other players might just say, ‘I’m going to wait for this and jump into another mission in the meantime.’ Our missions are checkpointed, so you can put them on hold.”
At a structural level, Funcom are currently toying with the idea of including an in-game browser. However, Ragnar argues that even by minimising The Secret World in your start bar, you won’t be truly leaving the universe it weaves – because it is our world. “It’s not like jumping from a straight fantasy world back into the reality of Google. You’re going from a place where everybody has web browsers to another place that’s exactly the same. And you might have to talk on forums, you might have to do some research, you might have to learn a little about, say, ancient Rome in order to progress”
But MMOs aren’t known for their mystery. With thousands of players a week cycling through the same quests, bosses, and instances and the backup of reams of online content – wikis, forums, and FAQs – how will Funcom keep their puzzles puzzling? Ragnar doesn’t foresee it as a problem. “We’re going to be patching up new content later, but of course, in the long run people are going to solve everything. But depending on what kind of player you are, you might want to try your hand at it yourself, you might call out in one of the in-game channels for some clues, or you might go outside the game to look on the wiki. That’s part of the joy: to be able to go into The Secret World and see this world where these mysteries are being cracked by hundreds of players, and see forums alive with theories.”
I want to get the jump on those forumites, so I ask Ragnar to describe his favourite missions. “So you want spoilers, then?”, he asks. I’m about to explain that, technically, I’m just acting out his message of extracurricular research, before he barrels happily into the overview.
“One has a fortune teller that’s been having visions of the tip of a pyramid. This is an investigation mission that is very much about the in-game stuff, and it asks the player to figure out where she’s talking about. In this specific case there’s a place called Pyramid Point. The player can look at the map and figure that out.” Ragnar pauses.
“There’s another one set in the town of Kingsmouth in Maine. A priest puts the player on the track of symbols through the game world. They’ll find them on the manholes on the street, but as they progress through that they get to a puzzle that involves the name of a painter. They can get that through Wikipedia, or another online resource.”
Funcom are making their own online resources, letting the Secret World bleed further into our own. Kingsmouth.com already exists, a tourist site for the sleepy fishing village that belies the Lovecraftian sinisterness lurking just under the surface. No doubt it will be scoured for clues come launch, but Ragnar says it won’t be the only site. “We’ll make other websites that look normal – but players might have to hack into them some way, or find a password.”
Ragnar admits there was a danger in The Secret World. Taking on a remit that boils down to “what if everything ever were true?” is a Herculean task. “I think the first few years working on this game, I saw too much, I dug too deep. I can’t unsee a lot of the stuff I’ve seen.” But when he talks about his Secret World, his enthusiasm pulls the listener in with him. “There are mysteries still, it’s not like we’ve found everything. There are still deep and dangerous forests. It’s human nature to be intrigued by that.” The Secret World wants to plunge you into those murky woods – and it’s a similarly intriguing proposal.
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