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

Another pleasant surprise was the very enthusiastic feedback to the in-game voice. We do have in-game voice-over-IP and historically there’s been some debate I guess over how much players would want to use that, whether it destroys role-playing, etc. Certainly for our type of game, where it’s very quick paced and there is a big focus on combat and tactics and well-oiled teamwork required, voices adds a lot. The players responded well to it being built in, and we also got a lot of positive comments on the strong voice quality. Many said it was the best voice quality they’d experienced in an MMO, so that was good.

Global Agenda CBT players especially enjoyed the co-op PvE missions in the 1-20 game.

The third pleasant surprise was just the enthusiasm of the beta testing group. We thought we made good decisions on who we let in and of course you can’t let everyone in in the first batch, but really good enthusiasm as far as just a lot of play test hours. The number of people that packed in more than 40 hours in just these three days was exceptional - a lot of folks doing all-night marathons. I hopped on Saturday morning and there were folks that hadn’t gotten off yet that started playing Friday. When you only have three days, you know, they wanted to get all the way up to level 19, which is what we ended up capping it at. In fact, there were a number of folks that took all four character classes up to 19. All of those were very good surprises for us.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are you seeing players gravitate toward one or two classes?

Todd: No, we really didn’t. In fact, I just talked with Stew Chisam (VP of Game Operations) to get the latest stats from Sunday night. We have four classes and three specializations / talent trees underneath that, but it is close to 25% [total participation] for each of those classes. There’s a slight bias toward recon, it might have been 27% recon - a very slight bit above one quarter of the characters created were recon, which we always expect.

Ten Ton Hammer: Sure - everyone wants to be a sniper at first.

Todd: Yea, it’s one of the more appealing ones to start with. But, really balanced across the board in terms of what players want to try. That actually matches what we saw in our alpha test. Which is good because in beta, players only had a weekend, and assuming they had the time to put in, a lot of folks did try to sample multiple classes. But that also matches what we saw in alpha where the community’s been playing for literally months and everyone has a main character.

Ten Ton Hammer: You’ve focused on PvP for much of alpha. Has PvP taught you how to design PvE encounters? Are you integrating player behavior into the AI for the co-op missions?

Todd: I think the best thing for us, as far as starting from PvP, was the general level of balance between those classes and philosophically, at least, we made the decision we were going to balance for team based PvP first. That continues to be what we tweak balance for. On the PvE side, we’re able to make the AI so it’s just fun and challenging, based on those classes and the devices that worked well in PvP.

And actually I’d say that our evolution has been a little bit of the opposite, in that our very early PvE was more of a simulation of PvP. The AI system that we have did a pretty good job at that, but it also didn’t provide a unique enough experience from PvP, so if folks wanted to do PvP, they would just do PvP. So we’ve actually have shifted away from opponents that mirror player classes and have moved to more distinct enemies that are just fun and more different.

So in our PvE, players will encounter a few opponents that are like players but even more specialized, so really really good recon melee stealth guy that’ll come from nowhere and take you out if you’re not looking in the right direction.

But then we also have completely different bots, such as our scanner bot when you go into a commonwealth lab and there’s a bot that has a detection ray that it’s casting around the room. If it detects one of the players while it’s active and scanning, then reinforcement androids show up. And when those reinforcement androids show up, they’re dispensed with fairly easily, especially at the low levels. They’re fodder, you toss a few sticky grenades in their direction and they blow up in a very satisfying manner, ragdolling all over the place. So that’s just a completely different mechanic that’s consistent with all the devices but provides something unique in PvE.

Global Agenda class balance seems about perfect in early closed beta testing.

So our evolution has been more towards that. Specialized bots that are really good and provide excellent team-based PvE, using the same devices as PvP but not necessarily yielding the same gameplay experience.

Ten Ton Hammer: I can’t imagine that there would be too many players with this mindset given the kind of game Global Agenda is, but if someone wants to go fully PvE, what are their options in Global Agenda? What are they going to be missing out on as the game progresses?

Todd: At this point, our intention is that a PvE player will be able to contribute toward their agency making progress on the campaign map. The concept of resources gained through PvE could be used toward crafting implants that would generally improving my character or could be put up on the auction house and earning credits. Some subset of those actions could go toward my agency doing better in the campaign. We’ll certainly test to make sure that that concept sticks, but right now that’s a pretty important concept for us, that PvE players would be able to contribute toward the campaign.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there different abilities for PvE and PvP? Do devices and abilities work roughly the same for PvP and PvE encounters?

Todd: At this point there’s no difference. Just in terms of the unlock progression - the sequence of gaining new items, new implants, and skill points - this beta activity validated our framework there. We got a lot of feedback that for 1-20, this was fun, they could feel their character progressing, etc. Because we started with devices that work for PvP and then making PvE fun around that, that’s allowed us to keep the device set the same, for now.