Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The massively multiplayer online gaming audience is one of the most critical, intelligent, and observant of any game genre. We constantly banter back and forth at each other about the qualities of a Blood vs. Unholy specced Death Knight or the recommended way to slaughter your opponent as a Chaos Marauder. Developers are constantly trying to capture that audience's attention and make them discover the numerous ways to play their game.

Even concerning items like physics in space, gamers will find something to argue about.

However, this same intelligence and attention to detail can be the stake that drives into the heart of game that is nothing but a blood-sucking corpse. Even if a game has received an incredible amount of attention in its prereleased state, gamers will tear through the content then spit it back out again when a game hits store shelves. And that's why the developers at NetDevil are spending an incredible amount of time making sure that they appease the massively multiplayer online gamers along with the space action fans that are going to be attracted to their upcoming MMOG, Jumpgate Evolution.

In Part One of our interview with NetDevil's Hermann Peterscheck, we discussed everything from capital ships to exploration to the recently announced 150,000 beta testers that are signed up for JGE. As we continue the interview in Part Two, we began our conversation with Hermann focusing on those MMO gamers and how they're going to respond to a title like Jumpgate Evolution. With the gameplay in Jumpgate Evolution promising to be action-packed, how would MMOG players that are used to slower types of gamplay react when they first jumped into an action-based game?

"We spent a lot of time deliberately trying to address that very issue," Hermann said. "There are a lot of people that have played the game that have a traditional MMO background, but maybe they've played a space shooter sort of game in the past. Or maybe they haven't, but they like the idea of a challenge. In any case, most of the MMO gamers have responded with the fact that the game isn't as hard to master as they thought it would be."

"Most of the gamers come in thinking that they're going to have to concentrate on maneuvering and working the weapons on the ship, and they discover it's pretty easy. It's just an alternate game experience from the traditional MMO. It's not so hard that you can't do it, and we spent a lot of time to get that result," Hermann continued. "On the other side, we get players that aren't MMO gamers and they remember games like Wing Commander and Freelancer, and they sit down and think it's really cool because it IS like the Freelancer experience. It's nice to have that feeling of not alienating either of the two groups; I think we're going to be able to grab a piece of both of them."

Speaking of playstyles, another dilemma that occurs with MMO gamers is the fact that the gamers are used to having a variety of different options in a very short amount of time. Even though typical space shooters don't have that sort of variety [I couldn't craft my own Interceptor in X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter!--Ed.] Jumpgate Evolution is hoping to include a robust economy, intelligent craft, and still include a large overarching story to the entire game.  Will players feel like they're playing a game that's "on rails" or will they have the epic amounts of freedom that should be inherent in any game set in the vastness of space?

"I like to think of it - at least internally - as the Han Solo experience. He's a guy that sometimes goes off on his own and does smuggling runs to make money, and then sometimes he joins a greater cause and fights in these giant battles," Hermann said. "He's really all over the place."

The Jumpgate developers are trying to hit that "Han Solo" experience.

"I think that character represents everything that players will want to do in the game," Hermann continued. "Most of the other characters in Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi genres tend to be very stereotyped as either good or evil. Han is this character that moves around in all these different circles, and he encompasses all the players' experiences."

It may be true that gamers do tend to bounce around a game trying out various parts of the system, it's also important to remember that even while bouncing around, most players tend to always bounce back to the story and try to drive that element of the game forward whenever possible. In some games, that story is driven through in-game cut scenes (Guild Wars) and other games use in-game quest text or elements like that. We talked with Hermann about the use of cut scenes to drive story, and he had some fairly concrete ideals about that aspect of JGE.

"We’re trying very hard to stay away from things that “pause” the game," Hermann said. "While it’s really cool in Final Fantasy to get these nice ten minute cut scenes every hour or two, that would be terrible in an MMO. I don’t want to be bothered by that. I can only imagine the chat surrounding that, 'Hold on guys, I’ve got to watch this cool movie for 10 minutes.'"

"We want to do those sort of elements without necessarily stopping the gameplay," he continued. "I think a really great example of this is System Shock; they fed you information while you were playing. We’ve been looking much more at techniques to use in that regard. Fallout 3 also does this fairly well. We want to tell a story while you’re actively engaged. By doing that, you almost subliminally tell players the story, and it immerses them even more. It doesn’t stop the game flow, and I think that’s crucial in MMOs since other players are depending on you. That doesn’t mean you never do it, you just have to do it at very key points. The beginning of the game is a good example; we want to control the camera angle and the audio and that sort of thing because…it’s cool! But you don’t want to do a lot of it when you’re in the game."

Storyline and cuts cenes are great "filler" sort of content for players, but the staff at Ten Ton Hammer can tell what players really want to know about Jumpgate, and that's the ships! While we talk about player ships in almost every interview, we always try to check with Hermann to see what the state of player ships is in JGE. It's like opening a present from your grandparents, you expect the same answer every time [How many Christmas sweaters do I own?--Ed.] but sometimes you receive a nice little surprise. This time, Hermann gave us a little nugget of information about how players might be able to get a variety of different ships.

"We haven’t really set a specific number of ships that we’re going to have in the game," Hermann answered. "That said – off the top of my head – we have about 20-30 ships for each nation that are in various states of balancing. I think we’re going to have a lot more than that though. Here’s the thing that happens: we have tons of AI ships now. Every time we put an AI ship in the game, people go “I want to fly that!” It’s really an interesting thing. When people see something different, they want to fly it."

"We’re grasping onto that idea and we’re trying to figure out ways that will allow people to have those ships," he continued. "Maybe we’ll set something up as a faction reward, for instance if you got a perfect rating with “The Combine” you could buy their ship. That’s something that we want to reward, because people do want to have lots of variety of ships."

Even though players may have lots of ship options, it's often important for players to look and feel unique while they're out in the universe. Players want to feel like they're piloting Slave I or the Millennium Falcon rather than one of eight million TIE fighters spewing out of the docking bay of a capital ship. Ship customization is certainly something that players are going to be interested in, and although Hermann didn't have any concrete answers on the topic, he assured Ten Ton Hammer that it wasn't going to be a worthless system when it made it into the game.

Ship customization won't be a half-assed system in the game.

"I don't want to throw in a half-assed customization system, because I feel like a lot of games just put it in to mark it off a list," Hermann said. "We don't want to just throw something together and only do it "that" good. We don't want to short change the player. "

We concluded our interview with Hermann by asking him about the current state of the game, what they're working on, and what players should expect over the next few weeks. With a bit of teasing, Hermann again mentioned fighting larger objects in space as one of the team's main projects.

"Our goal right now is to get people in testing and see what they think of the game," Hermann stated. "Of course, on top of that there are always new features that we're trying to implement into the game. Answering questions like, what is our medal system going to look like? How is loot progression going to work in the game? How many ships are players allowed to own?"

"We're also working on a couple of ideas that are very very cool, and they're going to revolve around fighting larger objects in space," he concluded. "When we release video footage and screenshots of those experiences, it's going to take their perception of the game to the next level. We're just waiting to show it to the public when it's ready."

As always, we'd like to thank Hermann for his time, energy and unbridled enthusiasm. It's always a pleasure to chat with him about Jumpgate Evolution, and we hope we can find time to talk with him again in the near future!