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

Ten Ton Hammer: Will use of cover and the different stances become more developed in the future?

Lee: It depends on the situation, and currently there is a thing in the beta where the calculation for NPC attack rates was wrong. Basically, instead of an NPC having a base 50-60% chance to hit, the NPCs had a 100% chance to hit. NPCs were basically hitting a lot more than they should have. The fix is going up in the beta soon.

So when you crouched or went prone before, you didn’t notice a difference because the base chance to hit was so high.

Cover, on the other hand, is really hard. In PvE, cover is really hard to modify chances to hit based on just partial cover. We haven’t come up with a good way to do that yet, simply because it’s a very complex system. There’s a reason why, in good first person shooter games, you fight like five people at a time. The AI for doing cover is *really* expensive, and doing that with hundreds of NPCs out in the world is *REALLY* expensive.

Cover we don’t have a plan on, but stances we do have a plan on.

Ten Ton Hammer: What about a quick travel system? Anything like that going in?

Lee: We don’t have plans for that. We give you vehicles very quickly, I mean you can get a horse in the first town you go to.

But one of the strengths in our game is this huge world. It takes hours to walk across. I would rather give you a way to walk across it very fast, than to teleport across it. The walking across fast thing is basically what vehicles are.

At some point when the game gets much bigger, we may add a limited fast travel system, but right now we feel like the strength of the game is better served having vehicles rather than quick travel.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will players be able to mark locations on maps so they can visit them at a later date?

Lee: I don’t think we’ll have it at release. It’s definitely on the list of things to get done. As big as our world is, you really need something to help you keep track of stuff.

Most of the missions in our game use waypoints, because during one of our play sessions that we did, we just had all the instructions be “walk south, look for a building, and go inside.” Our game is so big that you’d miss a certain point in the directions and you’d end up walking for two hours.

Things got really frustrating for awhile, but things can get really hard if you don’t have a map, so it’s definitely on our list.

Ten Ton Hammer: How regular or aggressive are you going to be with your content updates?

Lee: I can only give you our plans. We have a very aggressive plan for post-launch updates, and we’ve already got our guys working on a new sector of gameplay where they’re writing out new missions right now. We’ve already got our first year of post-launch content planned out.

We know where we’re going and where the story is headed, and we have it mapped out in the world. The NPCs and storylines are written up.

That said, we’re going to have different types of updates. We’re going to have the more common small updates that may include adding a new encounter area or fixing stuff, And then we’ll have bigger updates where we may pull back the radioactive area around a zone and add five or six towns.

And then we have the sector add-ons, which raise the max level and introduce a whole new region of gameplay.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there player created homes or towns? Will they be in the game at launch?

Lee: We always get that. Every time we ask for questions, we always get that one because it makes so much sense for us. A few weeks ago, I basically turned in a list of features that I wanted that would actually make the majority of players happy, and player housing was at the top of that list.

We actually have a plan on how to do it, but I don’t really want to tell everybody because the plan may not work. I’m the game designer, I come up with what’s fun not what’s possible. If it works, it will be awesome.

Ten Ton Hammer: Could you tell us a little about the combat system?

Lee: Sure. Our combat system is basically a FPS-RPG hybrid. The hit determination is purely FPS. You have a reticule and you put it over the bad guy and click your mouse. Boom, you hit them.

Heads do more damage, while legs and arms do less damage. Certain types of weapons use a different reticule so you have a larger hit area. Shotguns will actually hit in a small circle compared to a specific area. Once you determine if you hit, it basically uses an RPG system to compare your weapon’s damage and damage type with their armor against that type of damage. Then you calculate the overall offense and defense to get the damage amount. If you hit someone, you’ll always do damage. It may not be a lot, but you’ll always do some.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will AI, visuals and that sort of thing continue to improve?

Lee: Definitely, we’re always doing optimizations on AI, pathing, the whole nine yards. We like what we have, so there won’t be any burning down and starting over, it’ll just be tweaking what we’ve already got. It’s a constant thing.

I will admit that sometimes it’s a step forward and then two steps back, but I think we try to avoid that as much as possible.    

Ten Ton Hammer: How does longevity play into the planning of your game?

Lee: Most MMOs tend to build their games where you race to the end. You’re trying to get to a level where, at that point, the real game begins.

This was especially the case in the original WoW. You race to level 60, and then this completely different game starts. I didn’t like that different game. I’m going to sound like the biggest loser in the world, but I don’t have twenty friends to do all this stuff with. I have like…five.

We are trying to put together an experience that runs over the entire length of the game. While you always want to get to that next level and advance, there’s never a feeling of needing to get to this certain point where you finally get to do what you want to do.

We have crafting, instances, levels, encounter, world bosses, and all of these things start at very low levels. Whatever you want to go do – go do it. There’s longevity in the idea that we don’t need to rush. You don’t need to run to the end.

That said, every time a new sector of gameplay comes out, there’s another fifteen levels and dozens of hours of content. Boom. Then we’ll get into boxed expansions that are going to be even bigger. We want to keep people long term by introducing new content and new replayability.
 
Ten Ton Hammer: Will merchants compensate their buy/sell rates depending upon what’s available on the auction house?

Lee: To lay the groundwork, we do have merchants. We do have an auction house. We also have a social skill that gives you better prices from merchants, if you advance it enough. It kinda represents the haggling that would go one, so if you’re making a crafter, maxing out your charisma and social skill is not a bad idea.

Basically, if you want the best stuff in the game, you go and talk to a crafter. If you don’t know a crafter, you can still buy the gear you want from a merchant or mission rewards. You can get the job done, but you probably won’t get the job done as well.

However, we don’t have anything tying merchants and auction houses together, but we do have some interesting ideas on that front. It probably won’t be in release, but we do have thoughts on that.

But our main philosophy is trying to encourage people to buy stuff from crafters. Crafters make the best stuff. You don’t need to know a crafter to play, but your life may be easier. With the auction house and the number of people we hopefully will have crafting, it will be pretty easy to find stuff.

Crafting is, by far, the part of the game that people really play. We created a chart of all the stats and skills in our game in the beta test. By far, across the board at every level, the highest stats were intelligence and perception, which are the two stats that control crafting. It was across the board!

Everyone crafts, it seems like. We joke because every time we add a new mission into the game, we ask ourselves how it enhances our crafting experience. That’s what everyone’s doing. It’s going to be really interesting to see, but we don’t want to force people to make friends with a crafter to have a good experience.

Ten Ton Hammer: Last question, there are a lot of people asking about the launch details of the game. Will it be available for digital download?

Lee: Yes! We don’t have all the contracts signed, so I can’t go into specifics on who we’re doing it with.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will there be a collector’s edition?

Lee: I think so, but honestly I’m not sure right now.

Ten Ton Hammer: How can folks get into beta?

Lee: We have sign-ups on our webpage, on the user control panel in our forums.

Ten Ton Hammer: A big thank you to Lee Hammock, Lead Designer of Fallen Earth!