Age of Conan at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Possibly the most informative part of the Age of Conan Community Event in Oslo, Ten Ton Hammer returns with the video of the developer panel. Ten Ton Hammer readers can access the video here.  The hosts of the Q & A session fielded questions from the visitors and covered a wide range of topics from stealth to beta to spellweaving and female characters.

You've seen the video around the internet, now you can read the transcript.

---

Q: Could you talk a little about stealth? How is stealth going to work in the game?

Evan Michaels: The way that stealth works is a little bit different than most games. Most games it's very binary. You're either stealthed or you're not stealthed and if you are stealthed you're pretty much invisible to everything universally until something detects you or you get hit.

Ours is a bit more dynamic because it's a skill check between the person stealthing and the people observing, meaning that for instance in PvP different players will detect the player at different rates. So one person might see another person and one person might not. That's kind of the difference between the two. Stealth is very limited in our game. Rogues are the ones that are good at it - especially the assassin - very much specializes in it, while other classes can train their stealth skill and be ok at it, they shouldn't expect to be amazing at it. In that way, stealth is very useful, especially for the rogue classes; especially when you're trying to get around mobs and stuff like that, you are able to do that, very much like you are in other games. But the penalties for not training your stealth skill and not being a master in that skill are pretty harsh. We want to reward players that invest in that as something as part of their character, rather than just letting everybody have it for free. It's a choice the player has to make to put the skill points in, invest in that stealth skill, and then it's quite useful.

Gaute Godager: There are a couple of unique things that we use. First of all the NPCs in [Age of] Conan have different types of senses that they use to detect people who are hidden. The vision sense is actually a cone so moving around the NPC where you are out of sight will help you when you stealth.

Secondly, the light of day and the way light hits you also goes into this "massively complex" formula that [Evan] made. [laughs].  So, basically, if you remember - I don't know if someone [here] played the first round of betas back in June - there was a Thief light meter on the character portrait. That's not part of the GUI any more but it will come back and then you will see how light hits you, and that part of the formula; so you can stand close to walls and you can use the lack of moonlight and whatnot to increase your chances of not being detected. So that's going to come back in. It's still there, it's just not visualized.

So those are very vital, important aspects of stealthing. And there is another layer in that that we are debating if we are going to put in, and that's the players' ability to see NPC senses. We are wanting to do it but it's hard to make it look in character. So it's either like a nice hand-drawn line or box that goes like this: [makes clunky gesture of a box waving back and forth] that follows the guy, or we need to do some magic there to make it look in character. But basically it's the same way of "highlighting" that you see in Thief, when their look pans around, or in Commandos, if you remember that.

Evan: There's actually another element of stealth, and we've added these elements, as Gaute mentioned; the light level, or the "cover level" is what we usually call it. In addition to that we also have weight or sound noise level, and that is controlled by your armor. Basically, if you wear heavier armor which is nosier armor; full plate, chainmail, stuff like that, you generate more noise while you're stealthing - which means that you are more easily detected. That's one of the main reasons non-rogue classes have a hard time stealthing.

Gaute: But they can go nekkid, right?

[Laughs.]

Evan [laughing]: Yeah! That actually would help you stealth.

So all these things combined into a stealth system where the player has to be a little more careful and considerate. You know, they have to watch - Are they in the shadows? Are they hiding in the dark areas? Are they being careful not to move? Because when you're standing still you don't generate a noise level. You know, are they staying out of sight? Things like that. So, you know, we want stealthing to be cool, but we also want it to be hard because it is very powerful and part of the coolness comes in mastering that skill.

Gaute: As you might have seen in beta - all classes have access to stealth. That comes directly from the lore as far as I can define it - see every character that is found in the game. In the books they sneak around whether it's a priest or a mage; they all sneak and they stab each other and so we wanted that. Thus, we needed to make it with elements that it couldn't be as binary as it is found in other MMOs. It needed to be more like a mini game - so that's why we did it this way.

Q: I'm guessing it's disabled while you're mounted, correct?

Gaute: Yes. No climbing. No sneaking.

Q: In what areas has the beta helped you clear up things that you weren't clear about or make decisions to add things, remove things, or change things?

Gaute: Yeah. Well. Oh. [pause.] That's like asking "please describe the last year."

[Laughs.]

Pål Hansen: In the background of the player there's lots of information. There's nothing being sent if there's nothing wrong but when it crashes and all that we have a full stack of traces and so on. So we are able to fix that very quickly.

Gaute: The most obvious one, of course, is the one that we stated as a reason for delaying the project in August. That was very much from serving, hearing, listening to journalists, people playing and looking at beta testers' focus tests, hand-picked influential people that we liked to ask and then just basically seeing that. I felt that the old way of executing combos was inverted to the way I wanted it to be. People couldn't remember and they didn't automate the things I wanted them to remember and automate. I think that's the major thing that cost us quite a lot.

It can be on the class side. Class interests, but sometimes it doesn't even reach beta before we axe it. But sometimes it does; and then we do it.

It can be on the pacing of the game. We changed the pacing of the game. We tune it up after listening to what people have to say.

It can be on the degree to which people are locked down in the Tortage part of the game.

You might not know it, but we have it in the works right now, for you who are not in the beta: The first twenty levels of the game is "single player" we call it, but it's not really that, it's more focused. You can do single-player epic quests during that part of the game. They're called "Destiny Quests."  People were actually saying that they really, really enjoyed it but they missed travelling. So what we're doing now is that we're adding a smuggler that will take you, smuggle you out during the day and that you go someplace that you previously couldn't access. Which, of course, all the story-lovers of the game sort of said: "That's really going to be hard for you to explain unless you do it properly because it's all about being secluded." But that really came directly from the beta testers saying "I miss going there, and I especially miss having my high level friends kick my ass, or coming to give me stuff, give me coin, and whatnot."

So we are changing the game almost everywhere on every level. It's just a communication where the factors are time, effort, and vision, and we try to have those merge as much as possible with the feedback that we get; to find the sweet spot somewhere in there.

I hope that was some concrete examples.

Q: We haven't heard much about spellweaving for a while. How is that coming along and can you tell us a bit about it?

Terje Lundberg: We still have a spellweaving as part of the plan for release. We've revamped it some to make it more simple and familiar. It still will be a big part of the magic system. We have the first test phase running upstairs already, but it still has not reached beta.

The way it will work is a special sequence where you cast spells and when that sequence is fulfilled you get a big option of doing something really heavy or nasty, with effects that might have on your character as a big risk involved pending on your character.

Q: Soul corruption?

Terje: Soul corruption is still something that we're thinking about - kind of different, hard to explain.

Evan: There will be many various negatives. As we talked in some of the various dev diaries before, and one of the examples was potentially killing yourself. That is definitely on the table for the more dramatic spellweaves - the big ones with the very large effects. They will possibly kill the caster if they're not careful.

Q: Sending yourself to hell? Is that still in the works?

Gaute: That was one of the things we saw people not responding to favorably to - when they got put to hell during a raid. Yeah, it's a cool idea and people will be all "Yeah, that rocks," but then they're like "that sucks!" So I don't expect that.

Q: So a bit more practical?

Gaute: Yeah. More practical, more down to earth, but still extremely deadly. I would say more for the caster than for the recipient.

Q: Female character choice has been disabled for quite a while now. How is that coming along? Do you expect to add it back in beta before launch?

Gaute: There are a couple reasons why we didn't do it. It took a lot of time to clean up all the animations - we have about 3,000 animations per character to do that properly. It also was to do with just making sure that it looked good enough before we launch it because people have special expectations for the female. It's going into the mid-January milestone which is Monday. It usually takes a week to get to the beta and so you can expect to see it then.

It is testable right now if  you're a GM. So it's right there, under the surface but gameplay wise it doesn't really matter. They play exactly like the male. Visually they're different and people have a special need for the female to be "hot" in the Conan game. It's a delicate balance and we've worked around the clock to make it and to have the rating boards approve it.

That's really a big issue for us because we need hit the Mature rating, not under-the-counter sales. So that's been a tough one for us in that regard, but yes, it is coming, and it's coming now in a very very short time.

Didrik Tollefsen: She's very good looking. I tweaked her myself.

[Laughs.]

Erling Ellingsen: Didrik, maybe you can add a bit. How it's been working with the female models, why you have been taking your time.

Didrik: It was a great cast as well. We had lots of fun doing it. It's a challenge as an artist - to make a goddess that everyone can say is good looking to them. We all have our preferences.

Gaute: I don't know how many different versions of the female mesh, the female animation rig, the female heads, the female faces, the female hair that we've been through. I guess the rig has been swapped out four times or five times. The mesh even more than that. It's just massively challenging to get it right. It is now. You need the right sizes in the right places.

Q: I thought we could create a woman character that looked differently?

Gaute: To some internal people's amazement, yes. Yes, you can make someone look like someone you really would not want to date. That's not a problem.

Q: So we can make a character fat, or... ?

Gaute: Yes. There is a special club for people like you downtown.

[Laughs.]

Q: How much effort have you made thinking about female gamers in Age of Conan? It seems like such male material.

Gaute: It's an interesting question. How to phrase that one?

First of all, female players are very very important to us and we want to include them as much as possible. But yes, you are absolutely right. Conan is an adolescent's fantasy, pulp world with and the modern female, equalitarian values don't mesh always 100 percent with that type of world. I think we made a choice that we would include or try to make it as pure as we could from a visionary point of view; to welcome all the females that wanted to play, after having sort of screened them away based on the vision being pure, if you see what I'm saying. I think there are quite a few female players. We watch the threads on our beta boards and we watch the people talking about the game. But I definitely think that we will have fewer female players than we would in a less pulpy, male-fantasy type universe.

I don't think it will be noticeable for the player. Not to be very glib about it, but nine tenths of the people you meet who say they're female aren't anyway. So making that nine to three isn't going to make that much difference. But all the elements that female players enjoy are there. All the social aspects that we normally say are typically female values - they're there. But I must say that there will most likely be more males enjoying those values anyway. It's not as cut and dry as you see them. It's not what appeals to whom isn't as cut and dry as we would like to hope for when we market the game.

Erling: I'd like to just add one thing on that. When I've been travelling around a lot, talking with the gaming press and so on, I meet a lot of female journalists of course, and many of those have actually said that they look forward to Age of Conan because they can finally have a chance to play something sexy, and not just a cartoon character, or a caricatured character. They can finally play something realistic and mature, and something they can identify with.

Q: In regards to raiding and looting, what kind of mechanics are in place for players to choose from? How do you handle loot?

Gaute: Let's start with group looting. We have three different loot modes. Round Robin, we have team division and random and I think we also have first come, first serve. In terms of the raid, it's the raid leader that can distribute. So there isn't any "token" system in place for handling raid achievements. Not as far as I know. [Turns to Evan] Do you know of anything that snuck in there somewhere?

Evan: Unfortunately we don't have anyone from the high-end gameplay here and a lot of that has to do with their planning. We have generic systems but how they implement the execution of it is purely up to them. I know from talking to them that they're primarily going for drops. I've heard talks of a token system but I haven't heard specifics of what they have planned for it.

Gaute: I doubt there is something concrete there. Did that answer your question?

You were asking about raids more specifically. We will have twenty plus raid targets at launch. We're going to have 24-man teams as raid target number of players. Almost exclusively the raids are high level, as in 75+ to 80. I think there are one or two examples of lower level, but I'm not totally sure if they're going to make it or if we ramp them up to level 80. Our estimate says that we have several hundred hours of raid content, and I hope that's true, but it also depends on how hard we make it. I mean we can make one raid take several hundred hours. [Laughs]. But I guess that won't be too appreciated.

We are planning to have an item-based raid leveling system which gears you towards taking the next level of raids in place. I think there are three tiers of raid content.

Evan: Yes. Currently there's tiers of raids and raid loot planned of increasing strength that will basically allow you to start working on the next tier. They have a very interesting and creative solution going on with the way that raid drops versus non-raid drops works and from I've seen the balance of that and how it impacts PvE non-raiding versus raiding is actually very solid. The distribution - We're in a unique situation with basically our classes and that's caused by the fact that most of our classes are what would normally be considered "hybrid classes." Very, very few of our classes only have one role and due to the kind of generic system we use for what people can equip. A lot of the loot that drops will be used for multiple classes and multiple people at the same time.

As far as I know there aren't any current plans to only drop, say, a necromancer item or a dark templar item and if you have no dark templars in the raid, you know, you just have to let it rot on the corpse. So I think they're trying to take a very broad approach and make sure the progression is as fun as possible.

---