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

Ten Ton Hammer: While we’re on the subject of grouping, are there any associated bonuses once you have a full team put together?

Bill Roper: There are definitely bonuses for that, for example there is an XP bonus for being in teams. Also there’s certain content that you can get into by being in teams such as the 5 man lairs and things of that sort. So there is some content that requires you to be in a team of 5 players, or I suppose I should say we greatly suggest it, though if you’re well over equipped you could probably do it without a full 5 man team. The main thing is that, as bonuses, you’re getting better XP and more loot drops, so it increases your chances of getting better or rare items.

Ten Ton Hammer: You’ve also mentioned previously that certain content will dynamically scale depending on a team’s size. Could you give us a brief overview of how that system works?

Bill Roper: The Reinforcements system triggers at having 3 and 5 heroes going through an area. What it does is sets how aggressively NPCs go to other similar groups in the area for backup. So say you find some VIPER agents and you come at them with 3 heroes in your team, one of their members will run and get help.

You can always identify it; they’ll jump on the radio or there will be some tell that they have that basically says, “I’m going to get help!” before you see them running off. So if you want to, you can focus on the runner and attack him using holds or slows to manage the reinforcements even.

Then at 5 team members they’ll be even more aggressive and attempt to bring in more or bigger reinforcements.

Ten Ton Hammer: So do the runners simply attempt to gather other enemies of a like type from the surrounding area, or will you see fresh spawns appearing around your team as you engage in combat?

Bill Roper: When you have a team of 3 people they usually run and grab other people from the area, and then at 5 team members on rare occasions some will additionally spawn, so there’s kind of a mix. Usually though, they will go and attempt to pull from like groups that are nearby.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there any advantages or perhaps additional content that’s unlocked by forming a Super Group?

Bill Roper: There are definitely some things that you’ll get by being in a super group. One that will probably be exciting for players is the fact that there is a super group-specific bank; more storage is always good, right?

Then there are also a lot of the typical things you might expect from being in a super group like being able to choose super group colors and an emblem and being able to apply those. So if you wanted to all go out adventuring together everybody can have an identifying or unifying look. There’s also a lot of the chat-based stuff like being able to set the MotD; so really all the core things you’d imagine might be associated with having a super group.

Past that, probably close to launch, we’ll start on having things that are super group specific. One of the things I really liked about Warhammer Online is the way that they built in long-term goals for guilds with associated rewards. So I really want to do something along those lines; it’s a great idea that Mythic had for the game. The way I thought about it is almost like treating a super group like a character; so you’d have different achievements or once you get to a certain level with the group you’d get certain things.

So I’d love to be able to have rewards that groups could focus on. Then your super group could say, “If we get this many people we’ll get this, or if we complete this many missions we get this.” There’s all sorts of things you could do as a super group that are heroic and then have those reward structures built into them. That’s kind of the super group focus moving forward.