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

Ten Ton Hammer: Being that recons are naturally a little more fragile than the other classes, would you say that they’re a little more equipment or upgrade dependent than the other classes?

Recon class sketches.

Todd Harris: I really wouldn’t say that recon is more dependent on gear, because all of our agents rely a lot on their equipment and devices. So, in terms of playstyle and how people spec, they might be a little more dependent on using the element of surprise, basically, in their attack style. But other than that, I wouldn’t say they’re more dependent on equipment.

Going back to your early question about what happens at the top level, since you can be viable even at the early level, a lot of what you get when you advance is just more versatility. We talked about all those roles at the beginning - sniper, scout, spoiler, beacon hunter - really what we see happening at the top level, based on acquiring a complete arsenal of devices, allocating skill points, and just being more familiar with the game, is we’ll see recons being versatile enough to play all of those roles. That’s not to say that if I’m spec’ed skill wise as a sniper, I probably won’t be able to take out enemy turrets at close range as I would as someone who was spec’ed that way, But I still want people to have the flexibility to be able to do that.

Ten Ton Hammer: What are the big mistakes you’ve seen players make with the recon class? Because recons are so versatile, maybe doing too much too soon is a common mistake?

Todd Harris: Because all our classes are broad, probably across any class there’s just a general possible mistake of trying to do too many things at the beginning versus specializing and maximizing your skills.

Things specific to recon are, one, we talked about the enemy beacon, and particularly in coordinated play, the recon is looked toward to take out that enemy beacon, but in the beginning recon players might not know that they’re particularly well-equipped to do that. So you’ll hear over voicechat and team chat requests for recons to hunt the enemy beacon if it feels like its in an aggressive place.

As you mentioned, they can be kind of fragile once they expose themselves. So once a recon does identify a primary target, a beacon or a turret, another mistake we see is that they basically won’t finish the job. They take it down to partial health, and once they’re exposed, they’re threatened, and it’s always a judgment call as to whether self-preservation is important to finishing the job. In many cases they may opt to disappear into the shadows. But that also means that the robotics class can then repair the beacon and let more teammates in or repair the turret and wipe out the opposing team. So not finishing the job is another thing that we’ll see at the beginning.