Fan Faire 2009 - Panels Q&A#2
Our Fan Faire 2009 coverage continues with Q&A from day 2 of the panels with Matt Wilson, Kevin O’Hare, Steve Kramer, and Dan Myer.
Will there be live events? A live story line? I’m not trying to say like MXO, but like MXO.
Matt Wilson: We haven’t really announced exactly what were going to be doing on that side. But events are important, things that allow the story to progress. Things that allow people to get hooked is the bread of MMO’s. We really have to be able to support that.
We’re doing things all the way to automated events in the world. We haven’t announced what our live event strategy is going to be, but the easy answer is that events are important to our MMO, and we will support them.
You got a gold rating in that mission, once you get a gold, can you repeat it?
Matt: You can repeat any mission. The whole idea is that mission rewards will be variable to some extent. So you will want to repeat missions to get different rewards. Now on the bronze, silver, and gold strategy, a bronze you should be able to accomplish by yourself fairly easily. Not a cakewalk, but very much accomplishable as a solo player.
Silver is going to be much more difficult for you to achieve as a solo player. And gold will require some bonus objectives that will only be achieved by a group experience. If you come over and check out the mission that we’re playing through in the booth, you’ll be able to see some of that.
How about operatives, can you go into a little more detail on how they’ll work? Can you rank up your operatives with experience?
Matt: We call them living loot, and part of that is being able to collect these operatives over your lifetime. As you collect the different operatives they’ll have different skills and abilities that they’ll be able to bring to bear for you. It will be up to you to decide basically what kind of person you want to be and how you want to play.
We are definitely looking at how we want to rank up. Everything from them gaining experience to providing new skills. That’s definitely something we’re very excited about.
I saw in the booth that you gain experience with whatever you do, like shooting? How does that better you in the game? As the game is basically point and shoot, what does the experience provide?
Matt: I’m going to give you the high level of that, as we’re holding some of it back. The high level is you’re going to be able to gain weapon and mission based experience. Weapon XP is about advancing your weapon skills, being able to augment those weapons and gain new abilities for those weapons as you level up.
You’re playing XP is mainly gained through doing the primary missions. As you rank up you’ll be able to get more abilities and skills for your players. As you rank up the weapons you’ll be unlocking more families of weapons. That’s kind of the basic idea.
Weapon XP is something that we want to get all the time. We don’t want the players to feel that someone else got their experience. So weapon XP and advancement will happen quickly. Where player XP is a group experience, when you finish that mission you’ll get the XP.
Can you change your allegiance? Or are you locked down to your original choice between the 2 agencies?
Matt: Right now, we’re going with you start with one and stay with one. Betrayal is a key component of the spy genre. But the kind of betrayal that we’re looking it is primarily with your party and guild structure. It’s definitely something that’s been requested a lot, and we’re continuing to think on it. But there are some implications as far as how we’ve built the sides and that kind of thing that could be exploitable. So right now I’m going to say no, but it is something that is interesting to us.
How about putting everyone in the room on the early list for beta?
Matt: Again, how much money do you have? Actually, when you leave the room, you’ll be getting a little bag with the gold master in it….{Editor: Unfortunately Bustenhause stole my bag}…Just kidding, you guys should know that all the Fan Faire attendees are always first for this kind of stuff.
Are you going to be locked into a role? Or can you change your activities to a different role?
Matt: You are what you wear is kind of our primary principal. When we first started playing the game and doing focus groups we realized that especially in the shooter world where they are used to instant action, people are not used to be locked down, and they want more flexibility.
You are what you wear is our simple class system that allows that flexibility. We still want people to feel unique and we want them to have that role while they are playing. That’s why you cannot change during a mission. But you can go back to your field office any time to switch outfits and start advancing that outfit.
So you can level each outfit separately?
Matt: Absolutely.
You’ve only shown 2 or 3 character types. Will there be large varieties?
Matt: Are you talking about avatar size?
Yeah, so far I’ve only seen 2 or 3 main looks.
Matt: Right now we have 4 looks on the males and 3 looks on the females. We’ve actually made a ton of different looks and experimented with it. But honestly once they get a certain distance they all look pretty much the same fairly quickly. One of the things we want to do is provide that customization through the outfitting. So we’re going to focus more of the energy on attachments, other things that can really make you look radical, hair, skin color, etc.
Running at 30 fps is one of our key goals. Making sure that we can give as much customization as possible through clothing and items while keeping the frame rate high is important. The avatar sizes are really different, but we are not doing as many in between’s.
Steve: What he means by that is body types, we have several main body types. But there is a level of customization with hair, face, pigment, etc. We have lots of customization at that level. Just the body types are limited because of collision and other things.
When you talk about the instancing and public areas, is it similar to Guild Wars or DDO? Where it’s a hub and spoke kind of system, with the non combat areas being public. Or kind of like EQ where there is a variety of content in both?
Dan: It will be more like EQ in that area. We do want to have most of our high intense combat be in the instance space so we can have a lot of enemies be onscreen at once, and a lot of scripted events. But in the public space we are intending to have lots of activities and lots of opportunities for combat.
The main goal is that we don’t want to be too much like a complete hub and spoke model. Because at that point the public space is really just a chat room. We want to make sure that there are a lot of activities that have you interact with other players. Cross other paths and do stuff with them before you go into these highly individualized instances.
How similar are the story lines between the two different agencies?
Kevin: One of the big questions when we started the project is how much buyer remorse do we want. How much do we want to reroll characters? Obviously we said first off with the roles, we don’t want you to play that necromancer, and then 10 levels later say I hate necromancers and throw away the character and start over.
However, there are benefits to locking you into gender and faction. The faction is mostly about style and we will tell different stories, so you may want to make a different character to experience the other side. Or perhaps down the road as we said, there might be betrayal.
Story wise a lot of different things that happen in different missions that you go own. But we do want to have convergence so the end of each act there is a major villain. You’re against Unite or Paragon, but you’ll have to overcome your differences and work together because of the world threat.
How about pricing? It’s kind of hard to have a monthly recurring fee on the PS3.
Matt: We haven’t announced our business model yet. We’re keeping an eye out on Free Realms and other SOE products, and will announce some time. We’re really looking to lower the barriers of entry. We’ve designed the game to support a lot of different models.
The real answer is that we’ll announce that in the future, but from a game perspective we want to make that entry point low. If you take a tangent, if you take games like Rock Band, and others on consoles, I would say that I’ve spent a lot of money on those products. The key to anything will be that you as a player has to feel that they get immediate value.
We do need some kind of recurring fee in order to put out content constantly and being able to support that dev team. But I think we want that barrier as low as possible.
How is PvP going to work? Will there be active faction based PvP?
Steve: There will be lots of PvP actually. We haven’t shown it in depth as we’re still developing it. We’ve talked about doing things like that. We have a concept called PvP Anytime, where you can pull up a menu at anytime and join a PvP match. Say you’re sick of trying to get a gold, or frustrated with something. Pop a button, and start shooting things.
You’ll get a list of game modes, a list of maps, see where your friends are. Jump into these matches and get right into it. We’re supporting a variety of game modes that we’re play testing currently. We’ll ship with the ones that are the most fun.
We’re also exploring the possibility of stuff that takes place in other parts of the world like Kiev, or Prague. The thing that we don’t want is for you to come out of the field office and get shot in the head, spawn again, get shot again, etc. That’s a huge concern. We want it to be fun for everybody. Some people don’t feel very aggressive in terms of how they play. So we are evaluating what our options are.
We have a variety of options that we’re exploring and we’ll ship with the ones that are the most fun.
In game economy?
Matt: There are a lot of things that you’ll be able to win as rewards as you play the game. I’m not going to tell you what it is, as we’re still working out the balance. But itemization is very important to us, money is important to us. Operatives are kind of the nexus of all of that. We want the opportunity for players to be very willing and incentivized to work with other players.
To trade, to do tasks for each other. Maybe I build something for you, you turn it into something else. So there is a lot of stuff that operatives play very well to help us drive that economy. And then the reward system has to drive into that.
Will there be a casino? Mini games?
Matt: Since the beginning we’ve been wanting to put casino games into the game. We’ve basically started putting in our mini games right now, and as we get to the casino games there are some that we definitely want to put in. There is probably some legal reason that something might occur, but it is something that is definitely very exciting to us.
About 2 years ago you had plans for out of game interactions with the game, such as email and SMS. Is that still the plan?
Matt: We’re still looking at where we want to go with. Actually it’s one of those things where now that twitter and facebook are becoming more popular, I imagine that we’ll move more into that space. SMS is definitely interesting, but it’s one of those things that we’ve probably passed technology wise. Email, twitter, facebook, stuff like that is where we’ll get deeper into.
The answer is yes, it’s still in the plans. Email is the simple one that we know we’re going to have. But I think we’re more interested in moving into more of the social networking now as it also interacts with your phones and stuff like that.
What kind of guild support will there be?
Matt: For the guild stuff, I think the first part of any guild is that it’s a great place for you and your friends to join up and play together. But we have to take it past the standard structures that are already in place and make sure that there are some incentives in there.
We’ve got a lot of ideas around tasks and other things that involve operatives. Basically things that the guild and only do together. Stuff that we’ve talked about is basically that you’re only going to be able to use a limited amount of operatives to do tasks. Guild tasks will require multiple operatives that you cannot do, so there will be a dynamic of how the guild members get together to try to accomplish these tasks.
We really want to have that fun dynamic where people are working together. And incentives for the guild to go out on that recruiting campaign and get people to join up. It’s very important to have positive reinforcement for players to work together.
Are there going to be multiple servers? If so, will the Unite/Paragon locking be only server specific? So you could have unite on server 1, and paragon on server 2.
Matt: Yet to be determined. The technology that we’ve developed would allow us to have no servers if we wanted to. Yet when we’ve looked at that, we realized that players actually like places to identify themselves with. But it does allow more ease of moving, and stuff like that due to our consolidated database.
We’ll figure that out as we move forward. But we’re leaning towards having classification of the servers because it allows us to do fun stuff and allows people to identify with what server they are playing on.
Do you plan on having voice or communication program integrated into the game?
Matt: Absolutely not… Just kidding, who wants to talk when playing MMO’s. We’re actually looking at 3 forms of communication. Quick chat, which is follow me, cover me, phrases assigned to a button or controller, which can be used to quickly communicate with your team.
Voice chat will be supported on both platforms. We’ve got u-chat already supported which will allow you to talk cross platform and cross game with all SOE games. Keyboard and mouse works on both PS3 and PC as well.
Is there going to be a level cap, that will later be raised with expansions?
Matt: My simple answer to that is probably. We haven’t actually determined where that cap is going to be. We’re playing with some numbers now, but a lot of it fits with how the reward system works. We want to make sure that people feel that they are getting the right amount of rewards per level. But the inevitable answer is yes. With any of these MMO’s, once we start adding more content, we’ve got make sure that people can still grow within that space.
What about the joint agencies, guilds? Will they be able to challenge other guilds? For rewards in PvP?
Matt: We’re still looking into that stuff. PvP is a space that I imagine that there will lots of leader boards and things like that people will challenge each other on. Whether there will be pink slips and things like that, probably not. We want to have that high level of competition, so as we start building up our guild structures, that’s where we’ll see that kind of stuff.
Will the accounts be platform specific?
Matt: Unless something happens, that is what we are trying to support. A unified account across both platforms is in our plans. Only caveat, is if something in the platforms prevent us from doing that.
Is the leveling system going to be skill based where head shots and accuracy are more important that time?
Matt: We are a shooter first, so player skill does matter. As you rank up, unlike a typical MMO it still matters. If you take a typical MMO, let’s say a max level character goes in PvP against 10 level 1 players what do you think will happen? First, he’ll walk up and go wham, and then he’s going do his dance move. Then he’ll walk over to the next guy, and the next.
In our game, skill does matter. So if you have a max ranked character against 10 newbies, he’ll take damage. the max ranked character might take out more of them, but he will eventually go down. It’s definitely more of a skill based rather than time based game.
Dan: It’s really a matter of finding a balance between the hardcore shooter players, the ones that max out on their own personal skill. Versus the MMO player, who is used to a leveling system giving them advantages. They both play a role, but we’re not going to eliminate skill from it.
Along those lines, is gear going to be taken into account as far as power for PvP.
Steve: In PvP we have roles that are set up just for PvP that will be balanced against each other. You’ll come in as your character still, but you have outfits and roles that are associated with that map. And they’ll be balanced against each other.
We will have servers or maps where you go in decked out in your best gear and your cowboy hat and take care of business. You get to do a little showing off. But we are going to try to keep a balanced experience, so everyone has the same things to work with except in regards to their skill levels.
Matt: Regardless, it goes back to the you are what you wear concept. What you have on will dictate your role, which dictates your skills, which dictates which weapons you can have, which gadgets you can use, etc. Once you start going down that line, you will have a certain load out that you can bring into the map.
In regards to PvP, are you planning on throwing everyone into a space and let them go to town? Or are you going to do team on team?
Steve: We have a couple ways of doing it right now. We can have free for all matches, if that’s the kind of PvP that you like. We currently play team deathmatch the most at work. We also have team elimination which is a counterstrike style. We also have a few other modes that we are working on balancing currently.
With a full structured round, you can set the number of kills, etc. You get the bragging rights at the end, we even show the MVP on your team, all sorts of cool stuff like that.
Question: Will there be player achievements?
Matt: Absolutely, I will say that not only will you be getting standard rewards, but you will be earning achievements. Most games are moving that way, it’s very important to us. Especially on the PS3 where we’ll be integrating into their trophy system.
Special badges or names?
Matt: Yes.
Any unique items?
Matt: None of our items are unique…just kidding. That’s part of our economy that we were talking about, we’ll have to get that all balanced out. But definitely there will be items that are much harder to acquire than others.
There are a lot of SOE games on Steam right now, will The Agency be on Steam?
Matt: I have no idea, but I would assume that whatever distribution that SOE is using, we’ll be using too.
Will The Agency follow under Station Pass?
Matt: I cannot answer, as that’s not my role. But I’ll answer the same way, which is that SOE games use the Station Pass, so it’s likely. It does depend on the business model that we end up with.
What about integrating it into the beta station launcher?
Matt: We are already playing on the beta station launcher. We were actually the very first product on the station launcher. If you like the new station launcher, I would suggest hugging that guy right over there.
I want to thank you all for coming, if you have any more questions please come by the booth and check out the demo, and we’ll try to answer as many as we can can. We look forward to seeing you in the game, for now I suggest practicing on the casino mini games here in Vegas.