LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

On December 12th LAGWAR.com’s LifeNet: Fallen Earth Podcast hosted a very special live episode [listen here]. LifeNet’s Brad West and Jacob Fitzpatrick were joined by Fallen Earth Lead Developer Lee Hammock for a Q and A session. Just under 350 listeners tuned in live for the recording of the 13th episode of the podcast. Lots of topics were discussed including some hot-topics from the official forums as well as some listener questions. Thanks to everyone that attended the live recording for helping to make it a huge success.

For those of you who were unable to attend the live show, below is a brief overview of the topics covered in regards to Fallen Earth’s existing and upcoming content.

In-game Events and Player Interaction:
The first topics of the night was brought up with the tomorrow’s Social Patch in mind where players will receive a new in-game Holiday event. When asked how Hammock feels about their previous in-game events along with developer interaction with players in-game he stated, “In-game interaction between the development team and the players is something we have not done enough.” Hammock told us he felt this way mainly because in the past the team wasn’t quite sure how it should be done

He went on to say that some previous events could have been handled better. Hammock then explained that the team recently held some meetings regarding the addition of more story to these types of events. What they hope to create in future events are scenarios where the developers can play some type of villain faction where they have a goal to achieve and the players must stop them. The developers goals would be something other than killing the players though. Mainly because by succeeding you are potentially creating a bad experience for Fallen Earth players who participate.

In regards to the development team interacting and speaking to players in-game, he feels that it’s important to give players the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers directly.

“Fallen Earth is a niche game and we will never have the numbers that other games have. Word of mouth from the people we already have playing is the number one way we are going to get new players.” Hammock went on to say.

You can probably expect events like this to start popping up in the months to come.

Pet System Addition and Group Tactics Changes:
After this interview it’s pretty safe to say we will definitely see the Pet System in the game at some point. “We’ve gotten some work done that has bumped up the progress on it significantly. It has changed from being a someday feature to it doesn’t need that much more work to get done.” Hammock said.

During pre-launch testing an AP spending skill called Animal Training based on Charisma and Perception existed. All of the horse items were under this skill previously. You made pets but your ability to use those pets was based on the Animal Training skill. They hope to keep this basic idea. AI and control elements are currently being worked out.

Long-term, the development team will be changing Group Tactics to be called the Command Skill. Players will be able to hire mercenaries and things like that to work for you. You could have a pet that is a miner who has a really high Geology skill who follows you around and harvests nodes. The miner would also sport it’s own storage space. Also, a pet garage will exist to store the pets you are not using.

Overall, pets are similar to vehicles, except they will follow you around, harvest, kill, and do things like that for you.

The team is still trying to straighten out how pet advancement will work. Some ideas included everything from pets getting their own experience points and level progression to a training system where you can turn them into better pets. But those details are still be worked out and are very much in an infancy stage.

The Pet System is closer to becoming a reality than it was when LAGWAR spoke with Lee Hammock at GameX, but there is still a lot of work left to do on it. Hammock was sure to say, “It’s definitely not something you will see implemented a month from now.”

Construction Tradeskill:
The non-permanent part of it is complete as players will see in the Social Patch that is being released on Monday, Dec. 14th. Players will be able to build tents and camps and a whole new tier of intermediate components will be available. There is no player-housing to go with it yet, but the housing will come out of the Construction tradeskill. Construction relies on the same stats as the existing tradeskills and most of the components are things players are already familiar with. When asked for a component example Hammock said, “Wood is something players will be using a lot of when building camps.”

New intermediate components are required similar to what Ballistics requires, but there are no from-the-ground-up new components just yet. Lots of new components will come in expansion content though. Nanites were one mentioned in particular that will come from killing “very specific bad guys”. More mutant material and hides from creatures can be expected as well.

Multi-person Vehicles:
More of a “later” than sooner item discussed are multi-person vehicles. “Multi-person vehicles are not on the schedule but we really want to do them”, Hammock said. They are very complex because it’s a process of taking control away from a player and giving it to another player to control their movement.” Hammock explained. The development team realizes people really want to see it, but are concentrating on other things for now. The Interceptor and Tornado were two examples given that would fit this feature perfectly.

Mutations:
In regards to players who want to be full-blown mutants, Hammock basically explained that their vision is to keep mutations as a secondary role. The team realizes that you could play a mutations only character and it would probably be good at burst damage, but it would not be very effective long-term. Hammock went on to say, “You’ll see in some of the changes to Sonic Lance and Molotov, that we are putting less focus on burst damage. It’s really designed to be secondary as in, I hit this enemy player with Molotov then unload my gun on him. Versus, I hit an enemy player with Molotov and then I Sonic Lance, then another mutation, etc. That’s really not what we were shooting for.”

“Part of the problem we are having now is that mutations simply did not receive as much testing as some of the other features of the game. So now we are learning more about them and how players will use them. Players are starting to see things in mutations that we did not predict, which is why you are seeing changes to these abilities. It is very much designed to be a secondary feature though.” said Hammock.

Merger of Technology and Mutations
Later in our discussion we learned that in Sector 4 and some of the other areas we are going to see technology advance. Each sector is going to see some technology advance, don’t hold your breath for Star Wars technology though. Players are going to see more in particular with factions like the Lightbearers and Techs who already involved with technology, and will begin working technology into their mutations. For ChotA on the other hand, they are looking at doing something different. The team definitely wants to see a merger of some type between the two.

Hammock went on to say that with Sector 4 the team is making sure that the Techs and Vistas get some type of crazy nature thing so you get a parody in the types of paths they are pursuing.

If you have Patho-Transmission you could possibly create plague bullets or plague crossbow bolts. If you have Thermo-Manipulation maybe you could set your crossbow bolts on fire and shoot someone with it. Hammock seemed really excited when explaining his ideas on the merger of technology and mutations. “We definitely want to do stuff with that, but we currently have some technical limitations.”

An example given in regards to their technical limitations was armor piercing ammo. Hammock explained that it is currently not in the game because of technical limitation on how ammo affects weapons. Do they want to do it? “Hell yeah, but we don’t have a good way to do it.” Hammock stated.

Animations and Chainsaws
One item the LifeNet show has received several listener emails on is, oddly enough, chainsaws. When asked if we will ever be able to sport a chainsaw for mass carnage Hammock said, “We’ve recently gotten more control on our animations and we realize a lot of people have criticized them and rightly so, we had some technological limitations that are improving greatly right now so our animations are going to be getting better.” The team is currently trying to break animations up a little more so all knives do not have the same animation, or all rifles, etc.

One example animation mentioned that could potentially be used for the chainsaw was the rocket launcher. “We definitely want to do chainsaws and now that we have more control over our animations it looks like we’re gonna be able to. Just have to figure out how we’re going to. Our new concept art shows some really badass weapons. The new concept art shows doing horrible things to someone with a jackhammer.” Hammock said in an excited tone.

Heavier weapons were mentioned a few times throughout the night. Add that with the number of mentions during our previous interview at GameX and it sounds like we’re going to see some heavy weapons moving into the game in the near future.

Social Patch:
In regards to the Social Patch, Hammock gave a few details to explain what it’s all about. For the Holiday portion of the patch, the archive coalition have figured out the exact date of New Year’s Day, so there’s a big celebration of that. In this celebration each faction it’s own misunderstood Holiday. CHotA believe it’s Boxing Day and beat the crap outta each other. Players will have lots of special missions in the Central Towns. Also included are presents you can open and snowmen made of balls of dirt. Dirtmen? Additionally, there are new items to be had like hats and as an added bonus, players can actually shoot E.L.F.S.!

The real hot-item in the Social Patch are the addition of Bunker Bars. When you’re inside, there’s a pretty big room for you to hang out. While there you get a buff and the longer you’re there the bigger it gets. It increases your experience points gained as well as increases your resistances to certain effects. And of course there’s a bartender in there.

A really cool feature I’m looking forward to are the underground bunkers. These are available in every town and will be able to hold a lot of people without taking much of a performance hit like you do in the normal cities like New Flagstaff or Embry.

Bunker Bars will be in towns that have big Traveler influence. Traveler, CHotA, Tech, Central, Barter, and major neutral towns like Blaine have gambling machines in their Bunker Bars where players can relax and spend their hard-earned chips on Blackjack and slot-machines. Bouncers are also present to remove players that are sitting in the chairs but not playing. Players holding up the table will be removed in other words since the machines are actually occupied when a player is sitting at it. So multiple players cannot occupy one particular machine, though you can actually see how well another player is doing which means you can effectively watch someone gamble their life savings away.

As far as the payout and rules go, it’s Vegas stakes all the way, 86% payout over-time. Also present are NPC’s who shout-out an announcement if you hit big. The original betting system allowed one white, blue, and red chip to be bet at a time, but was modified due to betting a red chip and winning would payout more money than the system can count.

The new betting system allows one, 10, 50, and 100 white chip bets to be placed at a time. There is no time limit on how long you can play as long as you keep spending. Each bunker contains five slot-machines and five Blackjack tables. All Central Towns will have two bunker bars, two in New Flagstaff, two in Oilville, and one in most other towns that have the bunkers. Hammock did mention that the team may put a second bunker in Trader’s Flat if it gets too crowded as well as any other locations where adjustments may be required.

As far as games besides Blackjack and slots, “We totally want to have Poker, but the communication between client and server is tremendous because you would be going from client to server to other clients. It’s really complex versus Blackjack and slots, but its one of those things that’s going to take a lot of effort to do. It’s definitely something we’re going to do, but may take a while. We may do some type of Video Poker but multi-player poker will be a while.” Hammock explained.

Other games will be coming later on as well. The team has looked at a whole bunch of different games that they could do. Roulette was one in particular that Hammock said would not be too hard to do.

In regards to factions and gaming, the team really wants to come up with faction games for each individual faction, but it’s very complex to design. So it’s just an idea for now. “Go for Lightbearers and Chess for Enforcers.” Hammock stated while chuckling.

Faction versus Faction PvP:
This was one topic that I personally feel very strongly about. I had barely made it half-way through the question when Hammock jumped in to say, “We are working on something.”

It seems the main roadblock the development team has is that they cannot determine intent between players killing each other. “We cannot make the punishment purely faction point based. In short-term we will get something up to deal with this. Core problem is inability to detect intent. Running a check to see who shot first sounds simple, but it’s not. That would means you have to run an additional check anytime someone hits anything, which adds up to thousands and thousands of additional processes per second on the server. Effectively, if you kill someone who has same faction as you, there will be some kind of something that will mark you as a traitor. That will not change your faction rating, but will make certain NPC’s hostile to you. We have a pretty well laid out plan of where we want to go, the technology just isn’t panned out yet. The traitor effect is something that dissipates over time. If you are someone who shoots your own faction a lot, other faction members can kill you without getting in trouble. Loyalists can kill the traitor without being overly punished. The traitor cannot kill the loyalist without being punished. It will operate on past behavior.” Hammock explained.

Sounds like the development team is working on a way to keep background records on all of us, and those players who are fond of killing their own faction will have a rap sheet, not just a record.

Hammock closed out on this topic by saying, “It’s still in the early development stages but we realize it is indeed a problem.”

Dueling System
Working on something like this. Not much else said.

PvP Patch first, then Sector 4
“Our PvP is not as good as it could be and we are working on making it better. A lot of players PvP concerns will be met before Sector 4 is released.” stated Hammock.

I was very glad to hear about this PvP patch especially since it’s coming before Sector 4. It’s still a while out though.

When asked when Sector 4 specifically will be ready Hammock told us that there are things coming before Sector 4 that moves the game forward as a whole. Players will not be stuck at level 45 until then. New crafting items, new levels, and new content are coming before Sector 4 is released.

When explaining why Sector 3 contains a lackluster feel, Hammock told us, “From Sector 1 to Sector 2 the game really grows, but from Sector 2 to Sector 3 it doesn’t grow so much. “Originally it was supposed to be the Pet System, but we did not have time to do it. We do not want to do that with Sector 4. The layout will be different. Terrain and ecosystem will be changed. Sector 4 is going to have better developed PvP. The PvP patch that’s coming up will provide people with a lot more PvP experiences. In Sector 4 we are looking at a lot more player flow and more rewards for exploring. We want to make it decentralized. We want players to move around a little more and make things feel a little more survival oriented and less settled.” Hammock explained.

As for that big wall that currently separates players from Sector 4, there will be in-game events to deal with that. Sector 4 will not be coming to a wasteland near you in a couple of months though. Hammock was adamant that they want to get it right this time. He did want players to understand that by the time Sector 4 comes out you will not be level 45.

In regards to the Conflict Town system, it will be in Sector 4 but it will be more developed. Hammock told us they will be putting a cap on the number of points someone can get and change how points relate to player population. “Conflict Towns are not working in the game right now as well as we would like. Changes will be made to the ones we currently have.” Hammock said.

For other PvP patch details, it will give players a wider variety of things to do. The team wants to have mechanics that make sure enough people are there and the the sides are relatively even. In the patch, a system will be created for people who want to jump into balanced PvP fight quickly. That sounds very similar to instanced battlegrounds although he did not specify that.

The team is also working to revamp the existing content to make it more balanced. Conflict Towns were meant to be very faction focused, but have become very clan focused. The team wants to provide a PvP avenue for clans in a clan focused PvP context. “We love the big clans, but we need to change how they interact with each other and other players in PvP. As in, this huge clan has something to do with this other huge clan so they can fight each other and have a good challenge. Our current PvP system requires a certain mass of players to be successful.”

The PvP patch is still a few months out but is considered a near-term project. So, all kinds of new crafting, better developed terrain, like nothing we’ve seen before, drastically different approach to the layout of the land, more united, focused, weirder and bigger were all words Hammock used to describe Sector 4.

Vehicle Stats
We briefly touched on the topic of “useless” vehicles and the stats of vehicles. Hammock simply stated, “We shouldn’t have worthless vehicles. We are re-working the stats of all vehicles in the game.”

Saves Explained
One mystery behind the combat log is the obvious no-show of Saves. Saves among other combat mathematics are tough to find at times and for the most part are not available in the Knowledge Base.

When asked about the mystery behind Saves, Hammock explained, “Basically, percentage chance of resisting an effect that is the same level as you. For example, if you get hit with an ability that is 30th level and you’re a 30th level character, it is your chance to resist it. It compares the level of the ability to your Save number, let’s say you had a Save of 60. So you had 30, with 30 points leftover, cause 60 minus level 30. It then compares it to a sliding scale that is used for many things throughout the game where for the first 10 points of difference gets you an additional 1% chance of resist per point. The next 20 would get you an additional 1% per every 2 points. The next 30 would get you 1% chance per every 3 points, and so on up to max of 40%, which is 100 points.” Got it? Okay.

“So your first 10 points gives you a 10% chance to resist. Then the next 20 points would give you an another 10% chance to resist. Plus your base 10 leaves you with a 30% chance to resist a 30th level ability if you are of 30th level.”, Hammock said.

When asked why Saves were left out of the combat log Hammock answered very honestly with, “It’s an over-site.” He then explained that it’s not in the tool-tips because it’s too complex. Long-term they do want to work on getting more information out there into the Knowledge Base and into the excel sheets of players regarding the crit-hit chance calculations and how armor works.

“Our priority has been to resolve bugs at this point rather than giving out information like this.” Hammock said.

Some extra info on Saves, it does not work towards crit-based hits. Those are two separate systems. Chance to crit and glancing blow are based on your attack skill versus their relative defense skill.

Level Increase and Progression
As far as long-term planning goes, the level cap of 150 may not be in the plan at all anymore. Hammock told us that their current plan is up through what is Sector 5. Approximately up to level 90 or so. When asked how progression and character development will continue to work, Hammock said, “Progression will remain the same for the most part. Up to that point, expect the mechanics to basically remain the same. Passed that, we have changed the plan a decent amount to where we will not do 10 sectors the way we have done previously. Post-Sector 5 we will probably look more changing aspects of game play going forward from there. People will be sick of the Grand Canyon at some point. We want to bring a different setting to some extent.” And yes, Hammock did say that the idea of Vegas has been brought up.

When asked about this particular character progression to the approximate level cap of 90, Hammock basically said that in theory a level 90 character could in fact kill a level 5 character with his bad breath. There you go JBert.

iPhone App
When asked about the Fallen Earth iPhone app coming Q1 2010, Hammock simply said, “Crafters will love it.”

Players will have chat features as well as the ability to manage crafting queues, and in-game mail. “It’s really a socialization tool.” Hammock said.

But if you’re not an iPhone owner, don’t fret. There will be other options following the iPhone app for non-iPhone users. “We want people to feel like they can always have a presence in the game.” Hammock said. “Not just the iPhone folks”.

Server Growth
During our interview at GameX, the possible launch of new servers or “shards” was brought up. In this particular interview Hammock mentioned that the team had a discussion this last week to make sure the second shard is ready if needed.

Hammock seemed pretty confident that Fallen Earth will have multiple servers at some point, but they want to be very cautious and make sure it’s implementation does not fracture the community. He went on to say it probably will not be an immediate thing.