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Sword of the New World: Exclusive Developer Diary #3

Questions by Cody “Micajah” Bye

Answers by Phil Maurer, Operations Team Lead, and Jon-Enee Merriex, Senior Game Master

Next week, Sword of the New World: Granado Espada will open its doors to the press and a few lucky members of the public. Dubbed the V.I.P. beta, this event will last just ten days but is open to any interested member of the press. We should see a lot of information coming out during those ten days. Until then, however, Ten Ton Hammer has received our third developer diary straight from the SotNW developers.

This developer diary focuses on the stances and skills that are going to be available in Sword of the New World. Phil Maurer, Operations Team Lead, and Jon-Enee Merriex, Senior Game Master, join us again to answer a few questions we raised about the use of stances and skills within Sword of the New World.

Each class will have their own unique skill that is available in all stances.

TTH: You have a selection of sample stances on the website, how many total stances will players be seeing in the game?

Phil:  It is hard to say exactly how many stances we will have at launch.  We are still figuring out a few of the balance issues on the Unique Player Characters that gamers can earn in Sword of the New World. The Fighter has over 12 stances right now, which all have different skills and abilities.  The Scout on the other hand has the fewest at five stances.  Three are unarmed stances based on different support roles.   The two damage dealing stances are pretty wicked and offer some pretty interesting trade offs for when you do not want to use your Scout in a support role.

Jon:  I guess now would be a good time to introduce class specific skills, Each of the five basic classes all have a unique skill that is available in all stances.  The Fighter gets “Provoke”, an agro management skill to pull monsters to him.  The Scout on the other hand has the ability to heal in all stances, but will only auto heal in two of the stances.

Even though these characters are both Musketeers, their skill sets could be very different.

TTH: Are stances integral to success in Sword of the New World? Or are they just a form of alternate advancement for characters that are looking for a different sort of play-style from their characters?

Jon: I will take a page from Phil and answer this with a profound, “Yes!”  From watching our testers play the game, we have seen the stances used to personalize the characters to match their play style. The fighter is so diverse that heavy specialization in one stance will provide a much different character then someone that specialized in another stance, or spread out leveling across different stances.

Phil:  One of the great things about Sword is once you hit level 100, there are still things to do.  You can go forward and start leveling other stances.  A character that has maxed out multiple stances will be more powerful in the PvP aspects of the game than a character that only has access to one stance or has multiple lower ranked stances.

TTH: Is the term “stance” just a variation of the MMO term, “skill’? There are a decent number of skill-based game systems out there…how does the Sword of the New World system differ from those?

Phil:  I think that this may be one of the things that people are confused about with Sword.  Each stance has skills within it.  As you level the stance you can access more skills and have the ability to put points into each skill making it even more powerful.

Jon:  Sword isn’t about just using your skills.  It is about creating a family that melds the strengths and weaknesses into one cohesive fighting unit.  Some games tend to force you towards one role for your character and that is all you can do for the life of a character.  Healing classes, are an example of this.  No one really wants to play them as they are so hard to level up, but they are in huge demand at all times for support.  Sword breaks away from that. YOU get to create your perfectly balanced characters by using the stance system and placing points into the individual skills to increase the effectiveness of the skills that you use.

Instead of designing a balanced character, players will need to build balanced families.

Phil:  Fear my “Earth Tremor!”

Jon:  “Deep Straight” FTW!

Phil:  Honestly, I think the two skills we just mentioned are a great example of this; both of us currently are playing Fighters in our family using the “Back Guard” stance.  I tend to prefer the “Earth Tremor” skill because I like the AoE knock back ability especially in PvP, although it does have great uses during crowd control.

Jon:  I prefer Deep Straight because I like to focus on one character in PvP, and “Deep Straight” does huge amounts of damage to a single target.  This allows me to more effectively damage bosses and remove the single character in PvP quicker.

Phil:  Like I said, it comes down to play style, neither of us has a better build then the other…just different. And that is just with our Fighters.  Don’t get me started on how my Elementalist is better then his Musketeer.

Jon: Whatever. I remember our duel from last time (Jon won in a 3 out of 5 match). Want to try that again?

In all seriousness, I cannot wait until launch and see what the players will come up with. I know I cannot wait to see the arguments on the forums as to what is the best.  I think we will see some great emergent gameplay in how players try to maximize this system, and how quickly people come up with counters.

Phil:  I love the meta-game.

Players will always have new things to achieve and see in SotNW.

TTH: How did the concept of stances first come about? Were your developers looking for a way to add even more depth to the impressive amount that you’ve already included?

Jon:  I talked to Hak Kyu Kim about this.  He said that they wanted a new mechanic that no one had really done before.  He also wanted a system that always gave people something to work towards.

Phil: In other MMO’s your skills are based on your level.  In Sword they are based off of what you use the most.  Your character will meld to you, and reflect you.  You skills are not tied to your level like they are in most games.  This is not to say that a level 50 with a maxed out stance will own a level 100, far from it, but the skills and stances become much more powerful the more that you use them.

Jon:  Another aspect of this is that you may find that you do not really like the stance you are using or you realize that with the new Unique Player Character you added, the stance and associated skillset have become redundant.  So instead of forgetting the character and throwing away all the time you have invested, just move to a new stance that would better benefit your family.

TTH: Thanks for your time, and I hope we hear more from you guys soon!

Ten Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for Sword of the New World news and interviews!

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