New interview on RPGVault

[toray]

Another decent interview up at RPGVault.

I'm a bit concerned that our boys here are taking shots at the big boys already, but haven't shown us anything yet...

It's all well and good to take shots at Verant (I won't play EQ because of stories I've heard about their draconic policies), but it seems rather cheap for developers to take shots before their own stuff is on display.

Any chance we can get a more concrete list of races, classes, skill trees, some more concept art, models of monsters? Even if the engine's not ready, something's gotta be appearing on the world-building side of things...

Cheers,
T

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

They just finished redoing the whole 3D engine. They are going to have some new screenshots soon. I agree though the site does need a new update and more detailed info at this point.

[BelDragos]

Something on character generation would be nice so we could start figuring what we want.

[Rolfe]

Whoa whoa there, Toray. I played EQ for about 10 to 12 hours a day for the better part of my 6 month addiction. After the addiction wore off, I still played for a good 3 to 4 months before I got totally sick of it. I'm pretty sure that I can take shots at Verant. I DID my time. I KNOW what Verant policies are like and I have just as much right as the next recoverie to take shots at them all day long. Gods know they're laughing at me all the way to the bank anyway.

I understand your point as far as us cutting their programming abilities, but I don't think we've done too much of that. Usually what we complain about is their customer service policies, their staff's collective general attitude, and ALL THE FREAKING BUGS IN THAT DAMNED... er... uh... sorry. I got carried away. Just scratch that last one off the list. But we don't need to prove anything to cut THOSE things and if we DO need to prove anything regarding our own attitude toward you, the gamers before cutting verants attitude, I think we already prove it here on these message boards most every day, and I think it's safe to say we're NOTHING like Verant. There were those few GMs and guides that really stood out as being decent and fair people though, I'll say that. Probably MOST of the individual GMs and guides were pretty decent actually. I think they just had a lot of bad apples that really stood out and a lot of really lame policies.

We'll be posting the screenshots of the new engine very shortly as I promised. In the meantime, might I refer you to the "A Few Encouraging Words" post. Read it. THAT is Verant policy and THAT is what I cut down.

[toray]

As a player, you have every right to slam Verant's customer service, design choices, and so on. However, as a developer, and competitor, I would have thought it more prudent for you to refrain from such. Verant's lawyers scare me...

I'm looking forward to the screenshots, but frankly, graphics are the least of my worries :) I want to see races, story content (I dislike the Ultimate world intensely, but their backstory fiction for UO2 is incredible, and I will purchase and try the game based on that alone), and so on. I understand that things like skill trees and your exact skill system may need to be kept under wraps until you start external tests, but race details, artwork (concept art if not models), histories, monster descriptions, etc... these we should be seeing.

Right now, you've got a small core (corps? either will work in this case; how odd) of dedicated fans (including me, though I'm more vocal in criticism than most of these other folks). In order for the marketing process to move on, you should really have more bait than what we've currently got.

As things stand, I will definately play DAoC, UO2, and Shadowbane, at least for a month each. When Horizons finally shows its face, I'll try that. When the Might and Magic MMORPG shows, I'll try that. And when Arcanity shows, I'll try that. Maybe you'll overlook my effontry enough to offer me a beta spot :) But that's a lot of competition, and not everyone has the cash to shell out for every game to try them all. Marketing is your friend, and this website is your face to the world...

Cheers,
Toray

[fredrick]

I think putting out more information would be good to hook additional people.. but there's also a competition factor. If they put out too much information on races etc, it's possible for other game designers to start using their hard thought ideas. (You never did mention what Sierra did to eliminate your "Cataclysm" name. I'd probably know, but I don't follow Sierra much anymore. QFG2 being about the last game I think they really did right :-)

The in house beta hasn't even started yet... I suspect once the in house beta is winding up they will start leaking/releasing more information. Once the open beta begins, they will get most of their people... but until then, I don't think they need to release that much info.

Of course, I'd very much like to read more stuff. :-)

[Rolfe]

Fredrick is right on in that we really won't pushing to market the game or prioritizing posting of detailed game info until we get a little closer to beta. It's not so much that we're worried of others stealing our ideas. It's more that we're much more limited in manpower than most of the other games you mentioned, Toray, and we sincerely can't dedicate the time to draw out detailed information that's in a presentable enough form to post until we have a game to play first There's not much sense in putting my effort into marketing until we have a game either. The little bit of "marketing" we did thus far was sort of to test the waters. Rich and I really think MMORPGs are the RPG of the future and that they somewhat market themselves, but the others weren't about to take our word on it without some evidence that our marketing "plan" would work. Once the new 3D engine is integrated into the client and the servers have more than just minimal functionality, rest assured that we'll then focus harder on marketing the game and providing more informative info about the game play.

[BelDragos]

How will you determine who will get into the beta test?

[Rolfe]

I'm pretty sure we have room for somewhere between 150 to 200 people in beta testing. We've been talking about expanding that to about 300 to 400. Once we start trying to build a little more serious traffic, we'll figure out if we need to expand it or not. None of us have ever beta tested anything this big from the developer end and we're not sure how many people we can handle and what, if any, the complications are with more or less people on a project this size. Everyone signed up on the message boards should have no problem getting into beta. We're pretty much going to just pick the beta testers by the date they signed up on the message boards, and you were all here first.

[Lordosis]

I thought I'd come out of my programming cave long enough to post my 2 cents on this.

I'm really not sure I agree with the current trend of releasing temendous amounts of game info way before a game is released. I'm going to single out Horizons on this one as an example. They have huge debates allready raging on their message boards about small details of the varous races. This is a game scheduled for a 2002 release date, and here they are arguing over the tail on the freaking lizard race. I guess it gives people something to do while they wait for the game.

For better or worse, Brick House doesn't have the man hours to devote to producing copious amounts of irrelevant material months upon months before release. Do you really want a detailed description of every skill and magic spell? Let's face it, every game gets old eventually. I don't want Arcanity's shelf life to start diminishing 9 months before it's released.

But it's not just a business decision on our part not to release all this "info". When you pop out of the womb in real life, the doctor doesn't slap your butt and hand you a big book full of every possible career and the strength points of every bully that's gonna beat you up in junior high. These are things you have to learn for yourself the hard way, or learn from the experiences of your peers. Life would be very boring if every detail was laid out for you at the beginning. I don't see how an online virtual world is differnt from the real world in that respect.

The first time you log into Horizons, you are going to know exactly what kind of character you want, exactly where to put your stat and skill points, and exactly what the progressions of your character will be. I don't want Arcanity to be like this. If we do our job, logging into Arcanity the first time will be a completely new experience. Even creating your first character will be an exciting event. This is all lost if we "spoil" it by posting all the spells, skills, weapons, armour, etc.

If you want to learn more about a certain skill, you'd have to ask someone who is an expert in that skill. Given that there is no permanent game world yet, no such experts exist that can answer your question. When we're done with the world, you can log into Novus and seek out a worthy instructor. What I'm trying to say is, we've posted about all we are going to post about skills. Anything more detailed will have to be learned through experience and communication with other players and NPCs.

I don't mean to sound preachy. You will see more info coming out of us, but it will be general game play info, not detailed descriptions and lists. Even much of the geography will have to be learned in-game.

Now I'm going to crawl back into my cave and get back to work. Where was I...

[fredrick]

One thing I've always missed in online RPGs vs. real RPGs is being able to look up stats that make sense in equipment, your player, and other characters/npcs. For example, the +5 toothpic of accuracy (or whatever that was posted in another board :-) We'll surely be able to see that it's uping dexterity for accuracy.. and maybe giving a temporary skill modifyer. But what I'd really want is to either have a skill, or a spell, or both to evaluate the actual stats of that weapon. (i.e. almost exactly the code used RE that weapon) For non-magical weapons, a skill would make sense.. but you'd probably need a perceive magic spell to know what magical alterations there are.

I'd also want to be able to determine the same for NPCs and what not.

Also, would there be any objection to someone posting a web page RE what the stats are of different stuff? (Of course any such web page would need to acknowledge that any such information is subject to change without notice) For each game I get really drawn into, I tend to do such a page.

[Slitherrr]

From my own experiences with MMORPG's, I have never liked pages that list all the items in the game and their stats... It just removes a lot of the mystery in the game. It's not a thing of "if you don't like it, don't go" either, at least for me... If it's there, I irresistably find myself heading to the page every once in a while just to check, like having a crack addiction I can't shake, which is why I go to extreme pains just to not even know of their existance. Unfortunately for me, the lists are going to happen regardless of what anybody on the staff does... It's just not one of those things that's worth enforcing simply because there are too many other things that need attention.

On a related track, however, items aren't going to be a real big focus in this game, and even special items are going to be just that... Special, with very very rare to nonexistant reoccurances of that weapon. From what I've seen so far, the devs share my opinion that it's stupid to see the Legendary Backscratcher of Doom, once wielded by the famed Hero of Awmus, carried in the backpacks by fifty-hundred different people(/coughseveralexistingMMORPG'scometomind/cough).

Oh, and it was +5 Backscratcher of Accuracy, if you were still curious.

[fredrick]

Hehe.. thx for the info on the backscratcher of accuracy :)

RE stats, the reason I am always persuing stats is that the question of "what's better" is frequently left unanswered within the same weapon class. That and when someone is offering to sell you a certain item, I frequently find myself not knowing exactly what it is they're offering to sell.

What I'm wondering is for at least the common items (i.e. a plain dagger), will we be able to determine what it's combat adds are? Any damage bonus, accuracy bonus/hinderance, etc. I've found myself more than once paying out my entire savings to purchase an item which turned out to be unusable by me, or not as good as another item I have.


While I agree with your approach on items not being an integral part of your character, I think it will still be something that will come up.

[BelDragos]

That +5 Backscratcher of Accuracy is mine. It's for finding those hard to reach spots. I pulled it out of the 1st ED DM's Guide comic on pg 123 for an example on fabrication of magic items.


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