“Traditionally, it’s almost like the
stories are for solo-players,” Joe said. “Most
games don’t have storylines that mesh at all, and often one
players story is completely separated from another player’s
story.
“In our game,” Joe continued,
“Because of the nature of what we’re trying to do
with the overall architecture and game design, we want the two factions
(good and bad) constantly interacting with each other. There are plenty
of planets that have zones and puzzles where players are going to meet
up and have to deal with one another.”
When I asked Joe whether these combo puzzle areas would
require PvP to find out who has access to it, he assuaged any fears
that we may have had concerning forced PvP by stating that only PvP
servers will have open PvP at these points. Consensual PvP is still a
possibility, but it is not forced between the players.
Alternatives
border="1">
alt="OGDC 2007 - Stargate Worlds"
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album282/DSC_0003.thumb.jpg"
name="photo_j" border="0" height="100" width="150">
alternative routes that players can go along, when they're dealing with
puzzles.
One of the other avenues where puzzles have influenced the SGW
gameplay is in quest completion. According to Joe, quests will have
various ways to complete them. “Let’s say you have
a locked door in front of you,” Joe said. “In SGW,
you have a variety of options to choose from on how you want to get
this door open. You could blow the door open. You could lockpick the
door, which is a mini-game in itself. Or you could find the computer
controls for the door and hack into the system to open the door.
You’re not limited to one function when it comes to getting
through an area.”
As players access these puzzles, it’s not something
that is done as an “out-of-time” experience.
“All puzzles are going to be done in real time,”
Joe said. “There’s a countdown timer that forces
players to be on their toes to try to complete these games. However,
the sense of urgency to complete the puzzle is determined by the type
of situation you’re in. If you’re out by yourself
looking at ruins, you’re not going to be in a hurry. But if
you’re party is waiting for you to pick open a
door’s lock so you can escape from a gang of murderous Jaffa,
the situation is a little more dire.”
Giving Players Dead Space
Another type of mini-game that Joe’s team at CME
created was developed to address this issue of “Zen
gaming” or “dead space” where
it’s necessary to give characters something to do besides
work on a storyline or actually do something productive. For example,
fishing in the World of Warcraft is like this, as it’s not
particularly essential to fish to keep a character progressing in the
game.
“In MMOs, you have to have dead space; activities
for players where basically nothing is really happening,” Joe
said. “These are needed when players want to kill time or
basically want to log-in and use their client as a chat room to talk
with other players. And we have a couple of games that really achieve
this level of play.”
border="1">
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album123/Jaffa_Melee_Male_TTH.thumb.jpg"
name="photo_j" border="0" height="106" width="150">
style="font-style: italic;">
style="font-style: italic;">Even the more martial characters
will benefit from puzzles.
Benefiting from Puzzles
Even more martially inclined characters will want to help the
scientist and archaeologist types to go and solve their mini-games,
because if they’re in a group and a mini-game emerges,
they’ll receive XP as well. So it’s in the best
interest of all the players to try and do as many of these mini-games
as they can, if they wish to explore an avenue other than combat.
Concerning puzzles, Joe really wanted to emphasize the fact
that SGW isn’t going to be wholly focused on combat, and all
of these incentives are available to players who are interested in
completing and finding different sorts of puzzles. With martial
character escorts, players of all types and races will be traveling
across the various worlds in this Stargate-based MMO, completing
puzzles and reaping the rewards.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Stargate Worlds Game Page.
