Fan Faire 2009 - Panels Q&A#1
Matt Wilson, Kevin O’Hara, Steve Kramer, and Dan Myers answer questions at the first Agency panel during Fan Faire 2009.
Do we have to buy bullets.
Matt: If I told you, I’d have to kill you. No, just kidding. Yes you do have to buy bullets. There’s a lot of different ammo economies that we’re looking at. Some involve the operatives being able to help you. In fact, in the walk through that we have out there today, it’s one of the skills you have. If you have that operative, you pop that skill and he’s going to give you an ammo refill. But you don’t have infinite ammo as you’re running through the world.
What about outside of that, not in mission?
Matt: It all depends, there’s going to be a lot of weapons that you are not going to have to worry about resource management on. You either have the ammo or not. But definitely, you want to have special gadgets that have consumables. Operatives will help provide the consumables for you. We don’t want people to be annoyed gathering consumables that you fly through.
What’s the solo/group ratio that you are planning?
Matt: The high level that we are focusing on, subject to change of course. What we are focusing on right now is that every single mission should be able to be completed solo. That doesn’t mean it is going to be easy in solo. We’re balancing pretty much for two players for a majority of it, with more it should be easier.
But we also want to make sure that a lot of this stuff is easy to access, fun now no waiting. In public spaces we want to have lightweight encounters, really fast. Like those intel encounters you saw where they were taking pictures. Where me being with you can help you out, even if we’re not grouped.
And cause that easy social interaction like hey thank you. After thank you, it might be, hey what are you working on, well I’m trying to do a mission, you want to do it together, sure let’s form a group. Because we know it’s going to be a little bit easier.
Some of our instances definitely will be geared more towards group based. You will probably not be able to get gold medals playing without a team. You should be able to get bronze no problem, with silver being a challenge.
Kevin: We do have PvP as well. What we mean by PvP Anytime is when you join the game and are walking about in say Kiev, say you decide that you’ve had enough PvE, and want to take out your frustration because I haven’t been able to get my gold reward. You can hit a button and go to the PvP Anytime menu, and you’ll have a list of various game modes that you can do that are PvP oriented.
Currently we do a red versus blue, so it’s not necessarily Paragon versus Unite. So in theory you can play alongside Paragon and Unite players. We have the concepts of team deathmatch and team elimination, styles that you are pretty familiar with. We’re playing around with the ideas of buying weapons which you are probably familiar with. We’re also playing around with a capture the flag mode and other popular modes.
How about race? Are you going to have auto type or vehicle type scenarios?
Matt: Right now we haven’t announced anything about our vehicle stuff right now. The main thing we are focusing on now are group encounters. Raids in our games are not a typical raid, ours are going to be more about multiple groups in contested zones. You’re asking some good questions, because we haven’t really talked a lot about where we are going with our contested zones. I’ll just say that contested zones are what we are looking at for raid style encounters.
As far as using weapons when you do a head shot versus a body shot, is that going to make a difference.
Matt: Absolutely.
Steve: Oh yeah, it makes a big difference. It also depends on your weapon to. Some weapons are more effective than others. There are some that you will prefer to use depending on your style as well. That really comes out in PvP. We do have sniper rifles, and some people just love to hide in the shadows. One of our producers is particularly good at getting me in this one map that we do all the time. It’s frustrating, but fun that way.
Matt: I think Kramer hit on an important part. We want to have different roles that people can identify with, that they can play that style. So out on the floor in our demo you can see stealth, support, and combat roles. On the support side we are showing off our cool martini bomb which acts like a root, and our revive skill. It’s a little more splash damage for someone that may not be the perfect pixel aimer, you can play in that role and still be a heavy contributor to the team.
And then on stealth, you have to have stealth. Stealth does a lot of direct damage, and poisons and stuff like that. We really want people to get into that role. And then combat is do damage and take damage, more of you tank equivalent in a typical MMO.
Are you going to have anything for the McGuyver type personality, combining unusual items to make up your items?
Matt: The operatives is where we are going with that. They are our crafting system. One of the things about our crafting system, is it’s not a click crafting system. It’s a time based crafting system. What that means is that spies don’t click, make it easy, fun now no waiting.
You want something cool, you find the recipe to put it together. It’s not going to be able to combine everything together, there will be limits to the recipes. But as you saw with the weapons, we’re going to really open that up as much as possible.
But in the end, you’ll put your operative on a task, it may take an hour, a day, even a week. In some cases we’re even toying with super long ones that the guilds can participate in. The idea around it is, it’s done whether you are online or offline.
You want something like the golden gun, you put your operative on it and you log off. When you log in the next morning it will be like the golden gun is ready, your ammo is ready, etc. We really want to make it a positive experience when you come back online.
About the weapons, is it going to be strictly standardized recipes? Or is going to be like you complete different quests you’ll get things that would augment weapons different ways.
Matt: We’re going more that route, which is say you find a scope, there will be lots of weapons that can take the scope, and you can choose which weapon you augment. But there will be limitations, it will not be completely wide open. The idea is to give you choices.
So again, the only decision I have to make when I start the game off is male or female and Unite or Paragon? I don’t have to choose rogue or paladin and be stuck with that forever. It’s whatever I elect to play through the game.
Dan: Actually it’s a lot like what we did with Matrix Online. In that you’re never locked into your class. You come in and pick male or female and Paragon or Unite? Then on a mission by mission basis you decide what you want to do.
What about betrayal quests? Like on Everquest 2 you can be Keynos or Freeport.
Matt: Definitely betrayal is a key part of being a spy. We haven’t decided yet how far we’re going to go with betrayal. It’s definitely something we’re interested in. When we think about betrayal, it’s more at a localized level. Betrayal within your group or guild. So I’m sure you guys have experienced guild betrayal, surely you have. But as far as Paragon or Unite, right now we’ve made no decisions on that.
To finish Dan’s thing, the only penalty you have for switching roles is needing to go back to the field office to change your role. And each one of those roles advances independently.
Ought oh, he’s got a piece of paper in his hand. {Editor: he’s talking about the pages of questions I brought from the forums.}
What about joint agencies, can you go into detail on how they’ll work? In regards to operatives? Will there be an agency headquarters?
Matt: We haven’t announced exactly what we’ll have in the end for our joint agencies. Part of that is because we’re continuing to develop that out. The net is that we’ll have joint agencies and guilds. We’ll have the same level of support that you’re used to in Everquest and Everquest 2 as far as being able to manage that guild.
We also want to concentrate on what you do as a guild besides just having that as a social fabric for your group. We definitely want to role operatives into that, ie. bigger tasks that take more operatives than an individual can own. We’re going to hold off on more details until we’ve determined our path.
I love styles and I love stealth, how is that going to work in PvP?
Matt: I will say, and I’ll give you the whole honest answer on the stealth thing. We’ve already tried it 3 different ways and we haven’t nailed down the one we’re going to use. We started down one path and it was way over powered, I mean I loved it. But most people didn’t, like Kramer. Now we’re on another side of it right now that makes it a little bit more rock, paper, scissors. Which gives people the ability to counter stealth.
You really need to have the balance with a stealth system, because it can get wildly out of control really fast. So we’re more into that offense encounter side of it. Where is it going to actually land? I think it will land in a good space. Things we’re thinking of include does the stealth person counter a stealth? Or is it support?
The thing that is important, is that you feel like you are in stealth. And that you are doing things that a stealth person would do. Sniping, and things like that. And that it’s not so uber that it’s not fun for people to play, especially in PvP. PvE is a little easier to balance. But PvP can get wildly out of control.
Lastly, we want to make sure that there are good counters to it. If you realize that there might be stealth people in this mission, you know how to counter it. I think there are a lot games out there that have done it well. So we’ll be able to pull a little bit from them.
I have a PvP question. Say you are in that public area, walking along in Prague or Kiev. Are you going to have to worry about people attacking you?
Matt: Great question, it goes into that fun now, now waiting. The fun now aspect is that when you walk out of your field office you don’t automatically get hit with a headshot, hit the ground, respawn, headshot, rinse, and repeat. So if, you’re not wanting to play PvP you don’t have to play PvP, and you can advance the game without doing that.
If you’re in a public space there may be people that have opted in to playing each other. But you don’t have to do that, and you will not be affected by that. We don’t want to make it wolves and sheep throughout the PvE aspect of the game. So we really want to make it something that you are consenting to go into PvP before that action occurs.
Now there may be stuff going on around you and you go holy cow this is crazy, but you don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to.
So in other words it’s more like the Everquest dueling system, you have to accept before going into PvP?
Steve: We’re exploring how we want to do that right now. We have many options available to us. We know that we don’t want you to walk out and get shot in the head. We know that’s not fun because you don’t understand what’s happening.
We need you to understand that you are getting into a situation, so you may go around a corner and it will be really obvious that something is going on. Or you’ll switch over to an instance that makes it very clear to you that you are in a conflict.
Kevin: We want to make it very natural and understanding. The last thing we want to have happen is you’re like I thought I was doing this but actually I was doing that. Or you’re playing a mini game and bang your dead. That’s not fun stuff, at least not for the person who got shot.
Matt: I’ve got time for two more questions.
If you are playing as a mercenary, will you have the capability to make more cash as opposed to the queen’s spies?
Matt: Have you ever seen the cars that spies drive? They might not have the cash in their pockets. We’re not looking at that at all actually. It’s more about attitude and style. To keep the game balanced, this allows the players to be able to cross play in areas, and have cross economies. We don’t want to screw with that at all. It’s really important that that part of the game is balanced very well between both factions. Will you get more money on a mission, potentially. That’s not out of the question, for sure. But as far as the global side of things we want to balance those out. A lot of the stuff we do is keeping the factions as balanced as possible. So as people are playing through the weight doesn’t get shifted from one side to the other by accident.
Will you have cameo appearances, like walking through a casino and seeing celebrities or film spies?
Matt: That would be awesome, and if we could get those folks sure. But you’ll see me, I’ll be in the casino, is that not good enough?
Dan: And more to the point, in the mission that we are showing, Cassie Nova does show as a planted agent to help you with distractions, so we are playing around those types of concepts.
Matt: Jonny.
Can you go into a little detail on communication. Obviously, on the PS3 will be harder to communicate with others. And MMO’s are all about communications.
Matt: We’re focusing on three types of communications. The first is quick chat, ie. over there, cover me, I need ammo, I need support. Communication using pre built phrases, which should be very fast to do.
Second part is standard chat. We’re actually using the uchat servers right now which is the same chat used in Everquest and Everquest 2, pretty much all of the SOE games. Not only do we use it, but you’ll be able to communicate to friends in other games.
And the last part is voice chat, and that is critical on both platforms. This is an action game, which means that coordination is important, just as coordination is important in other MMO’s. You know how hard it is to type while trying to use your skills, unless your macroing. We want to make sure that it’s easy to communicate and voice is very important on both platforms. Both platforms are going to support the same things.
That’s the end of it. Definitely check out the play through and talk to the developers for more information. As this is Vegas we need gambling money, so if you bribe us, we’ll let you hold the controller and play through some of the mission. Thanks very much for coming.