In the event that you missed the H1Z1 Livestream Q&A, we here at TenTonHammer have taken the time to jot down all the most important notes and responses from each question. Please note that all of these responses are paraphrased. If you're looking to pull a direct quote from the stream, you should be able to easily do so from the official twitch channel. I've organized the questions in the order they were asked - so the format below should provide an excellent indication as to when during the session each particular question was asked.

What they're doing about hackers

More than you might think. This is a tricky question to answer, as you actually don't want all your anti-cheat and anti-hack measures to be public knowledge. If they were, the people that are actively trying to cheat, hack, and scam the system will have a better understanding of how to avoid getting banned and continue exploiting the game. H1Z1 benefits greatly from having so many engine similarities to Planetside 2 - which means most anti-cheat measures will be shared between the games on top of whatever the H1Z1 techs are able to specifically target within their own unique mechanical adjustments.

It's important to keep in mind that H1Z1 is still an early-access alpha game. The team has to be careful they're not banning on false positives and alienating potential future customers from their game. It's a slightly slower approach, but a necessary one. If your plan was to jump into H1Z1's Alpha and get a near flawless product, you might want to rethink your purchase. It will have flaws and kinks that need to be ironed our (many of them), cheating and hacking is one of those things. Be patient.

Plans for improving the building system

There are plans to significantly revamp the current building system. What that means in short: don't expect much to change now. There's no point in upgrading a model that isn't functioning within the game the way the developers are envisioning it in the future. Upgrading the current building system would be like buying a new paintjob for your Jeep Wrangler when you're about to give birth to your third child. It just doesn't make sense financially to waste time there right now.

Loot system changing patch to patch

This system had a lot of unseen bugs early on (many containers not even reproducing loot for the first week of the game, and so forth). A lot of those have been fixed (hopefully). Now the team should finally be able to accurately evaluate how much things actually are spawning. As a side note, the rarity of ammunition was entirely intentional. Be conservative with it - or to put it simply, stopping shooting other players on sight all the time and you should be just fine.

on the Development Roadmap

A rough outline for the next few months. The more imminent the timeframe, the more detailed the plans will be (as they will be substantially more concrete). This is being worked on, but the emphasis is still on stabilizing the current client and improving the experience for players prior to implementing a lot of new features.

How the layoffs are affecting h1z1

Although some H1Z1 team members were lost to this event, the team is still the second largest in the company (with EverQuest Next's team being the largest). There are still big plans for this game, including cross-platform and massive land expansion at some point this year.

on Player & Server Wipes

There is the potential that more will happen, but the plans are to have as few as absolutely necessary. Account items will NEVER get wiped. Additionally in the future all your initial item purchases will be returned to you after the final wipe prior to completely server persistance.

Characters Items and Appearances

A new character creation system will be coming in the future (and is currently starting production today) - including female characters and a brand new wearable system. The goal is for more player customization with hair, heads, and other options to make more unique avatars for the players that still fit the gritty feel of the game. Expect something much closer to a typical MMO wearable system. Currently there are only about 4 wearable slots, and the future plans are to aim for something closer to 10 (effectively doubling the itemization).

New Clothing, Items, and Craftables

The goal with new clothing is to change the character silhouette as well as give players purpose behind their clothing (that's not just aesthetic). Craftable clothing plans are going to lean towards body armor, camouflage and practical applications (in the near future anyways).

New Animals

Currently there are at least ten animals that are being worked on, although the team is focusing on fixing issues with the bears, wolves, and deer already in the game. Mountain lions, and rats were mentioned specifically as animals in the game. There are no plans for animals to work as mounts in the foreseeable future.

Clan/Group Systems

Squad systems from PS2 as part of the parent engine were not intentional, but the dev team is appreciating the knowledge and insight being learned by people that are using this unintentional and secretive feature. They do want to be careful with how the implement social features that allow people to amass power in groups too quickly.

Crafting System Updates

Improve the functionality of bases as mentioned earlier and also crafted items that can be worn. Additionally farming is being worked on, but it is not quite refined enough to start implementing.

On Rain & Snow and the Weather System

The new lightning system somewhat broke certain elements of the larger environment system and the dynamic weather. Meaningful weather is planned for the near future as soon as they can fix the issues new lighting caused as well as iron out a few other elements of making snow and so forth more impactful.

On Getting Kill Notifications

The team is wary of how quickly and how detailed they want to give this information to players - especially in the open-world. Plans are to add very basic notifications at first such as "you were killed by a vehicle" or "you were killed by a sniper rifle", which should help out a lot. More details will be added as they are deemed helpful and necessary.

Possibility for Australian Servers

Solid "Maybe" leaning towards "Yes".

Improvements to Vehicles

First person in cars is high in the priority of the list of things to do, improving vehicle operation and animations are also up there, and will come as they are needed to match the level of quality the rest of the game is at. Additional customization is a feature the developers badly want (think MadMax), to customize your vehicles and add armor, modifications, and other upgrades - though no timeframe has been given for these additions.

Improvements to Zombie Intensity

There are plans to add additional zombies as well as giving zombies the ability to progress and "upgrade" through "phases". There are definitely things already in place that the developers plan to use to make zombies more deadly. Many of these things are tied specifically to hardware usage, but some near-future plans are to add in roaming "hordes" of zombies (which were previously over-taxing the server CPUs more than the amount they were alotted).

ETA for different server rulesets

The coming roadmap will be the place to watch for this. The developers are adamant about creating new and unique rulesets and they want to create these based on the player's wishes. They plan to put several potential rulesets in the roadmap and let the players voice their opinions as to which ones should be prioritized first. Keep in mind they plan to recycle "unpopular" servers - meaning that less-frequently used servers/rulesets will likely get tossed to implement new ruleset types. Battle Royal is also being heavily tweaked at the moment, and it's very very close to where the developers want it right now.

On Private Servers

The team from top to bottom is still very serious about implementing player-controlled servers. Right now these exist just for streamers with large enough communities, but there are plans in the near future to start allowing non-streamer players to control a server of their own - so long as they have a community big enough to support it.

Camouflage for Players & Bases

This was mentioned before, but they elaborate here. The entire base system needs to get improved prior to them giving bases visual upgrades such as camo and additional armor and so forth. However, they do intend to include camouflage as an important feature in the future, but that will not be in the short-term for the next few weeks or months.

Best way to suggest improvements to the team

Responding to the Roadmap on the forums, on reddit, and on Twitter. Also, the developers stress the importance of basing your requests on the roadmap. Once it goes live and players can see the timeframe, they'll have a much better gauge on how long new features will take and will give them the opportunity to make more realistic requests (which enhances the chance developers will consider it more seriously).

Possibility of Weapon Attachments

Very much wanted, but this is very much a balancing issue. The depth is wanted, but the system for this has not been defined.

Improving the Melee System

It isn't a matter of want or capability. The system can support it, and the developers want it. It is mostly a matter of funding and resources, as a more complex melee system requires more character animations, which is one of the more costly aspects of any combat system. Also more refinement needs to be made to the base combat system for precision and reliability before any movements are made to expanding that system.

On the ability to Eat multiple blackberries

Yes, it is possible right now. Put them in your water and you can eat several at the same time. (Humorous, but true.) Blackberries are not meant to be the staple resource for survival. If you're still leaning heavily on them, you're probably doing it wrong. They do want to add more gatherable food in the game (other berries and fruit and discoverable edibles).

Any hints for the next update

Bug fixes and anti-cheat stuff. That is the focus of developers until they are satisfied with the current state of the game and that players are enjoying the current experience. Once that happens, more iteration will happen on future features and implementations.

Official Stream Info

That's it for the breakdown of the Q&A Session. If you want to watch the stream yourself you can do so here on the official h1z1 twitch channel

 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our H1Z1 Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Alex has been playing online games and RPGs for quite some time, starting all the way back with Daggerfall, EverQuest, and Ultima Online. He's staying current with the latest games, picking up various titles and playing during his weekly streams on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings with both MMOs and MOBAs being feature plays. Hit him up on Twitter if you have a stream request for Freeplay Friday! Two future games he's got a keen eye on are Daybreak's EverQuest Next and Illfonic's Revival.

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